Appendix B: Software Testing Questionnaire, Survey and Results

If you are going to measure how far you have come, you must first note the position where you started. In land surveying this is called the benchmark. A surveyor picks a good solid spot, paints an "X" on and says, "This is the benchmark; its elevation equals 100 feet." It doesn't matter where the benchmark is as long as it stays put for the duration of the survey. The "100 feet" elevation is arbitrary. It doesn't matter what its actual elevation is, such as its height above sea level, because everything is being measured relative to that point.

As the landscape becomes more civilized, durable monuments will be erected to be used as permanent benchmarks. Their arbitrary elevations and displacements will have been replaced by ones that have been normalized to fixed standards. In land surveying the standards are sea level, latitude, and longitude. Once the normalized elevation, latitude, and longitude of a benchmark have been established, the data is used to produce maps. In this way virtually all of the United States has been measured.

Making Your Benchmark

The following survey is nine years old. It had been completed by more than 1,350 people before they were exposed to these methods and metrics. To create your own benchmark, to measure your knowledge relative to the survey groups, and to measure your progress, complete this questionnaire before you read the results, and see where you fit.