Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 233-242).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [280]-291).

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2008. / Title from title page (Digital Archive@GSU, viewed June 21, 2010) Pearl McHaney, Renée Schatteman, committee chairs; Audrey Goodman, committee member. Includes bibliographical references (p. 80-81).

Context. Reports suggest that defects in code cost the US in excess of $50billion per year to put right. Defect Prediction is an important part of Software Engineering. It allows developers to prioritise the code that needs to be inspected when trying to reduce the number of defects in code. A small change in the number of defects found will have a significant impact on the cost of producing software. Aims. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the factors which a ect the performance of defect prediction models. Identifying the causes of variation in the way that variables are computed should help to improve the precision of defect prediction models and hence improve the cost e ectiveness of defect prediction. Methods. This dissertation is by published work. The first three papers examine variation in the independent variables (code metrics) and the dependent variable (number/location of defects). The fourth and fifth papers investigate the e ect that di erent learners and datasets have on the predictive performance of defect prediction models. The final paper investigates the reported use of di erent machine learning approaches in studies published between 2000 and 2010. Results. The first and second papers show that independent variables are sensitive to the measurement protocol used, this suggests that the way data is collected a ects the performance of defect prediction. The third paper shows that dependent variable data may be untrustworthy as there is no reliable method for labelling a unit of code as defective or not. The fourth and fifth papers show that the dataset and learner used when producing defect prediction models have an e ect on the performance of the models. The final paper shows that the approaches used by researchers to build defect prediction models is variable, with good practices being ignored in many papers. Conclusions. The measurement protocols for independent and dependent variables used for defect prediction need to be clearly described so that results can be compared like with like. It is possible that the predictive results of one research group have a higher performance value than another research group because of the way that they calculated the metrics rather than the method of building the model used to predict the defect prone modules. The machine learning approaches used by researchers need to be clearly reported in order to be able to improve the quality of defect prediction studies and allow a larger corpus of reliable results to be gathered.

This study focuses on a series of late-century works by women writers that incorporate facets of theatrical performance into the printed book. Literary drama was a common genre of the Victorian and Edwardian period, used by writers such as Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and Matthew Arnold to elevate drama to the status of literature, a term synonymous with the printed page and the experience of reading. However, this project examines a series of women writers who, in contrast, used this hybrid form to challenge the assumed superiority of text. The values ascribed to the printed page—that it was a disembodied enterprise unattached to the whims of its audience or the particularities of its author—were antithetical to the experiences of women writers, whose work was often read in the context of their gendered bodies. My study proceeds chronologically, reading the literary dramas of five writers—George Eliot, Augusta Webster, Katharine Bradley and Edith Emma Cooper (writing under the pseudonym “Michael Field”), and Elizabeth Robins—alongside changes in print practice and theatrical staging as well as evolving discourses about “literariness.” I argue that these women allude to theatrical performance in the text to show that the page always bears the physical traces of its authors and its audience. Each chapter blends book studies with performance studies, showing the way the form of a work invites particular responses from its readers. Overall, this project has two goals: one, to recover marginalized texts by women writers and revise narratives about the period to incorporate these pieces; and two, to span the scholarly chasm between Victorian poetry and drama and demonstrate, instead, the mutually constitutive relationship of these two art forms.

This thesis traces Hardy's involvement in the theatre from the 1880s to the 1920s. The narrative of Hardy's relationship with the theatre is set against an analysis of the changing nature of the stage during this period, though I acknowledge throughout the thesis the fact that Hardy's awareness of the theatre did not perfectly keep pace with its evolution. The aim of the thesis is to examine the motivations determining Hardy's work in the theatre in light of the fact that he seemed so dismissive of its efficacy. I trace the history of Hardy's adaptations of his work for the stage, before setting the scripts against the novels in order to weigh the extent to which the novels resist translation into a different medium – whether there is something integral to Hardy's plots that cannot be conveyed on stage. I have chosen to focus predominantly on material that made it beyond a rough sketch on a scrap of paper, on projects that reached the stage of rewritings and commercial negotiations - often years before they were produced. My selection has been determined by the belief that the material is indicative of the development of Hardy's understanding of the relationship between his work and the possibilities adaptation offered. My first chapter, on the history of an adaptation of 'Far From the Madding Crowd' in 1882, argues that Hardy's collaboration with J. Comyns Carr on the script was driven by his desire to assert his copyright over the novel's afterlife. The adaptation may never have been performed, but simply have been registered with the Lord Chamberlain as a deterrent against unauthorised adapters. It was the plagiarism row over Arthur Wing Pinero's possible theft of Hardy's plot in his popular pastoral play, 'The Squire', that pushed Hardy and Carr to stage their version. My second chapter looks at the history of Hardy's adaptations of 'Tess'. I am interested primarily in his writing of two scripts in the mid-1890s, and his negotiations with leading actresses in response to their interest in creating the part of Tess. The chapter then looks at the circumstances leading to the eventual staging of the play in the 1920s, focusing on the difficulties posed by producing a script which was by then thirty years old, and showing its age. In the third chapter I concentrate on plans to stage two novels, 'The Woodlanders' and 'Jude'. Neither was produced, but both are evidence of Hardy's increasing interest in the possibility of selecting from his material, rather than compressing it into the time available. The two adaptations allied Hardy much more closely with the avant garde than his earlier work had done – 'The Woodlanders' was begun in 1889 at the suggestion of J. T. Grein and C. W. Jarvis, two men who would later found the Independent Theatre, a private subscription society which pioneered the staging of Ibsen in England. Hardy's own sketches for adapting 'Jude' (1895, 1897, 1910, 1926) concentrated on Sue's position. I set Hardy’s realignment of 'Jude' against a focus on the place of women in unhappy marriages, drawing principally on Hardy's contribution to a debate about the role of wives in the 'New Review' for June 1894 and a 'Westminster Review' article by the feminist Mona Caird (August 1888), which provoked three months of debate (and 27,000 letters) in 'The Daily Telegraph' on the question 'Is Marriage a Failure?' Caird’s ideal dovetails with Sue's views on marriage as 'legalized prostitution' and her revulsion from 'the dreadful contract to feel in a particular way in a matter whose essence is its voluntariness!' The final chapter of the thesis looks at two adaptations of 'The Dynasts'. The first is a wartime entertainment staged by Harley Granville Barker in 1914, the second is Hardy's own adaptation for Dorset amateur actors (the Hardy Players) to perform in 1916, which concentrated on the impact of the war on the local populace. I then turn to the premiere of Hardy's only full-length drama written specifically for the stage – the one-act Arthurian play 'The Queen of Cornwall' (1923). I argue in this final chapter that Hardy was beginning to move from the role of reluctant adapter to that of director, conscious of the boundaries imposed by the stage and experimenting with how to craft his work to fit within them, rather than abridging his material indiscriminately.