
122 ◾ Software Metrics
An additional change in attitude is needed, though. Some researchers
and practitioners assume that validation of a measure (in the measurement
theory sense) is not sucient assurance that the measure captures the appro-
priate characteristic of the entity under scrutiny. ey expect the validation
to demonstrate that the measure is itself part of a valid prediction system.
EXAMPLE 3.20
Many people use lines of code as a measure of software size. The measure
has many uses: it is a general size measure in its own right, it can be used to
normalize other measures (like number of faults) to enable comparison, and
it is input ...