How to Conduct Experiments

The kinds of experiments you will have to perform include:

• Testing systems with small examples to verify that they conform to the documentation or to understand their response when there is no documentation,
• Measuring the performance of a system under two different conditions due to imperfect knowledge of their performance characteristics,
• Collecting statistics that may hint at the solution to difficult or hard-to-repeat bugs.

First, try to be very clear about your hypothesis, or the assertion that you are trying to test. It also helps to write the hypothesis down, especially if you find yourself confused or are working with others.

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