The Musa Data Revisited: Alternative Methods and Structure in Software Reliability Modelling and Analysis

  • N. Davies
  • J. M. Marriott
  • D. W. Wightman
  • A. Bendell
Chapter

Abstract

The valuable sets of software reliability data published by John Musa have been extensively used by software reliability modellers, such as Bev Littlewood and John Musa, to illustrate and validate their particular models. Such data are rare in the open literature, and these particular data are regarded as being carefully collected and of particularly high quality.

The nature of these software models in general use, however, is known to disregard much of the information content that may be available in data. In this paper we apply alternative methodologies, which are well-proved elsewhere in statistical analysis, to the software reliability problem in the specific context of the Musa data. In particular, classical and Bayesian time series methods and proportional hazards analysis are applied. The analysis indicates that systematic structure ignored by the conventional software reliability models can be identified in the Musa data sets, and employed for prediction.

Keywords

Execution Time Software Reliability Time Series Method Time Series Approach Censor Survival Data 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Elsevier Applied Science Publishers Ltd 1987

Authors and Affiliations

  • N. Davies
    • 1
  • J. M. Marriott
    • 1
  • D. W. Wightman
    • 1
  • A. Bendell
    • 1
  1. 1.Dept of Mathematics, Statistics and Operational ResearchTrent PolytechnicNottinghamUK

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