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Chapter 2
The Basics of
Measurement
I
C , how measurement pervades our world. We use
measurement everyday to understand, control, and improve what we
do and how we do it. In this chapter, we examine measurement in more
depth, trying to apply general measurement lessons learned in daily activ-
ities to the activities we perform as part of soware development.
Ordinarily, when we measure things, we do not think about the scien-
tic principles we are applying. We measure attributes such as the length
of physical objects, the timing of events, and the temperature of liquids
or of the air. To do the measuring, we use both tools and ...