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A Rubric for IT Analysis

Posted by timothy on from the useful-heuristics dept.

Aredridel writes "Zed A. Shaw has an insightful article on how analyses of software systems should be performed, and how they're often done wrong. It should be required reading for all IT journalists, and all readers of IT journals."

5 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Lying with statistics by YU+Nicks+NE+Way · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The author of the rubric "carefully" lists examples of things that ought to be seen -- and then carefully extracts two graphs from a long analysis in order to "prove" his claim. Never mind that the things he argues one should look for would be embedded in the materials and metods or results section, not the conclusion or the paper summary. Never mind, either, that his objections are bogus (red versus black ink? Uh, wait -- if the winning system had been shown in red, it would have conveyed how burningly fast the system was.)

    Oh, wait -- it's somewhich which shows that samba 3.0 is slower than w2k3. Never mind. This is slashdot, so the ditors have gotta troll for ad views.

    1. Re:Lying with statistics by Angostura · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Agreed, I'm sorry, the 'red lines are bad' claim is lame. If the Windows line was in blue he would probably have claimed that it "is intended to remind you of the blue screen of death".

      Moreover, he accuses the example graph makers of bad practice by re-scaling the x-axis, without rescaling the y-axis "to compensate".

      Excuse me? As far as I can see the x axis was scaled in order to display the data in the most room available, not to deceive in some way. The y-axes were left alone because the data range depicted were identical.

      A shame. There is some good stuff in the article, but it suffers by exaggerating its case in places.

  2. Re:MetaRubricry by concept10 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Thats my exact question. When will someone make software that will analyze TFA and tell me if it is worth reading? Think about how much bandwidth could be saved with this app? Sort of like a stumble upon for news.

  3. Good article by bobbis.u · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Perhaps the author of the Openoffice.org vs MS Office comparison should have read it first.

    I hate it when people lie with statistics. Even the BBC did it recently when they were trying to justify 1 million GBP on their new weather program. They said 7/10 people either liked the new system the same as the old one or preferred the new one. Perhaps they could also have said 9/10 liked the new system the same as the old one or preferred the old one? Who knows when you lump categories together like that without providing the raw data?

  4. somewhat obvious? by moz25 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What he's stating seems rather obvious, but then again I might not be his target audience. One thing he seems to be missing is: who is paying for the test and is the one in whose favour the test turns out to be also the one who paid for it?

    --
    see a Text Widget