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Search Publications by: David W. Flater (Fed)

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Displaying 1 - 25 of 61

Measuring social consensus

November 18, 2024
Author(s)
David W. Flater
Many organizations describe their processes as consensus-driven, but there is no consensus on the definition of consensus. Qualitative definitions of consensus prioritize social phenomena like "unity" that are not necessarily measurable. Quantitative

A unified model of core metrological concepts

July 10, 2024
Author(s)
David W. Flater, Raghu N. Kacker, Douglas Foxvog
The definitions of core metrological terms, especially quantity, quantity value, and unit, have been the subject of years of wrangling in standards organizations. A chronic disagreement exists over whether quantities are conceptualized primarily as

Letter to the editor: Unit one is intrusive

May 24, 2024
Author(s)
David W. Flater
The SI brochure's treatment of quantities that it regards as dimensionless, with the associated unit one, requires certain physical quantities to be regarded as simply numbers. The resulting formal system erases the nature of these quantities and excludes

What does the pixel measure?

January 11, 2023
Author(s)
David W. Flater
The pixel is often used as a unit of measurement in information technology. Unfortunately, there is not a simple, consistently-applicable answer to what it is a measure of. This report analyzes the pixel unit through the lens of metrology and shows how one

Dealing with counts and other quantal quantities in quantity calculus

January 1, 2023
Author(s)
David W. Flater
Continuity is usually assumed as a defining feature of measured quantities. This premise is false for counted quantities, amount of substance, electric charge, and others that are constrained to exist in integral multiples of a quantum. A software

Algorithms and Data Structures for New Models of Computation

February 1, 2021
Author(s)
Paul E. Black, David W. Flater, Irena Bojanova
In the early days of computer science, the community settled on a simple standard model of computing and a basic canon of general purpose algorithms and data structures suited to that model. With isochronous computing, heterogeneous multiprocessors, flash

A system of quantities from software metrology

January 15, 2021
Author(s)
David Flater
International Organization for Standardization (ISO)/International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 80000, the International System of Quantities, collects and organizes the most important physical quantities into a coherent system of quantities whose

Quantities and Units for Software Product Measurements

March 10, 2020
Author(s)
David W. Flater
International Organization for Standardization (ISO)/International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 80000, the International System of Quantities, collects and organizes the most important physical quantities into a coherent system. In a similar fashion

Unreliable evidence in binary classification problems

May 7, 2019
Author(s)
David W. Flater
Binary classification problems include such things as classifying email messages as spam or non-spam and screening for the presence of disease (which can be seen as classifying a subject as disease-positive or disease- negative). Both Bayesian and

Defining 'kind of quantity'

February 8, 2019
Author(s)
David W. Flater
The definition of 'kind of quantity' given in the International Vocabulary of Metrology (VIM), 3rd edition, does not cover the historical meaning of the term as it is most commonly used in metrology. Most of its historical meaning has been merged into

Bad security metrics: the problem and its solution

January 4, 2018
Author(s)
David W. Flater
It is generally acknowledged that few security metrics have the level of predictive validity that their uses require, but neither the nature of the problem nor the steps needed to avoid it have been fully characterized. This article examines both questions

Redressing grievances with the treatment of dimensionless quantities in SI

October 3, 2017
Author(s)
David W. Flater
The International System of Units (SI) and its associated methods adhere to a design principle in which all kinds of quantities are described in terms of a standard set of dimensions. It is a corollary of that principle that quantities having no extent in

Architecture for Software-assisted Quantity Calculus

December 2, 2016
Author(s)
David W. Flater
A quantity value, such as 5 kg, consists of a number and a reference (often an International System of Units (SI)unit) that together express the magnitude of a quantity. Many software libraries, packages, and ontologies that implement "quantities and units

Mostly sunny with a chance of cyber

September 22, 2016
Author(s)
David W. Flater
Counting known vulnerabilities and correlating different factors with the vulnerability track records of software products after the fact is obviously feasible. The harder challenge is to produce “evidence to tell how vulnerable a piece of software is”

A Rational Foundation for Software Metrology

January 20, 2016
Author(s)
David W. Flater, Paul E. Black, Elizabeth N. Fong, Raghu N. Kacker, Vadim Okun, Stephen S. Wood, David R. Kuhn
Much software research and practice involves ostensible measurements of software, yet little progress has been made on an SI-like metrological foundation for those measurements since the work of Gray, Hogan, et al. in 1996-2001. Given a physical object

Defensive code's impact on software performance

January 26, 2015
Author(s)
David W. Flater
Defensive code is instructions added to software for the purpose of hardening it against uncontrolled failures and security problems. It is often assumed that defensive code causes a significant reduction in software performance, which justifies its

Estimation of uncertainty in application profiles

October 3, 2014
Author(s)
David W. Flater
Performance is an important facet of software quality, and application profiling tools are the instruments used to measure software performance at the function and application levels. The most powerful measurement method available in application profiling

Estimation of uncertainty in application profiles

February 3, 2014
Author(s)
David W. Flater
Application profiling tools are the instruments used to measure software performance at the function and application levels. The most powerful measurement method available in application profiling tools today is sampling-based profiling, where a