Logic, damned logic, and statistics

In this paper we present the results of a statistical analysis undertaken upon the performance of students within the Software Engineering Programme at Oxford. The Software Engineering Programme is aimed at part-time students, most of whom are professional software engineers. The Programme offers a total of 26 courses within the broad spectrum of software engineering, with six being in the formal methods area. The focus of the research undertaken for this paper was the Software Engineering Mathematics course, which provides an introduction to (Z-style) predicate logic, set theory, and proof. In particular, we concern ourselves with the issues of whether performance within the Software Engineering Mathematics course is a good predictor of performance overall.