160 likes | 274 Views
Commercial Software Price and Employment Trends:. How Employment in Software Development Affects the Price of Software in Canada. $. Robert Hogg. Why Should I Care About the Price of Software?. You will be buying computer software to help you do your real job Teacher: PowerPoint, Word, etc.
E N D
Commercial Software Price and Employment Trends: How Employment in Software Development Affects the Price of Software in Canada $ Robert Hogg
Why Should I Care About the Price of Software? • You will be buying computer software to help you do your real job • Teacher: PowerPoint, Word, etc. • Programmer: C, Visual Basic, Pascal • Social scientist: Excel, Word, etc. • Business: Word, PowerPoint, Excel, COBOL, Access, QuickTax, etc. • Artist: animation software (Flash), 3D modelling software • Engineering: C, Excel, 3D modelling software, AutoCAD • The list goes on… • In addition to being of critical importance to the computer science job market, IT MATTERS TO EVERYONE!
$ Background • Many people believe the price of software is increasing. • However, business and commercial software can decrease in price over time: • Easy to develop • Base technology has not changed in years • Business has needed same functions for years • Word processing • Simple Math • Graphing • Other Simple Functions
Variables & Question • Variables: • Independent:Number of people employed in the software development industry, U.S.A., 2000 – 2009 • Dependent:Commercial Software Price Index, Canada, 2000 – 2009[CSPI] • Questions: • How strongly are they correlated? • Can one be used as a model to predict the other? • Is there a causal relationship? • I have chosen to omit this point from this presentation for brevity purposes.
Terms • Computer Programmer: Person who uses a computer language to instruct a computer on how to function. • Software Engineer: Professional Engineer (P. Eng.) who plans and develops correct and maintainable software. Sometimes also in charge of coding. • Systems Software: Business software, often designed by in-house employees, to automate payrolls, inventory, record keeping, etc.
What is the CSPI? • Commercial Software Price Index (Canadian) • Tracks the retail price of “pre-packaged software typically bought by businesses and governments,” (Statistics Canada) • Is an index • no one software product need be equal to the CSPI value at any given time. • Prices of software included in study may be up or down, vary with company, product, store, release date, etc. • Essentially the geometric mean of software prices in Canada • All prices do not include tax, shipping, handling, etc.
Price Rebound (2009 - present) Maximum @ Sept. ’00 ($106.5) Reference Period (2002)
CSPI = 113.6883192 + .000101746 Programmers - .000215579 Applications + 6.30455E-05 Systems
Causal Theories • I have chosen to omit this point from my presentation for brevity purposes. • An in-depth analysis is available on my Wiki. • http://ancasterdatafarruggia.wikispaces.com/Hogg%2C+R
Conclusions • The number of computer software engineers in the United States is strongly negatively correlated with the CSPI • The number of programmers is also strongly correlated, but positively • A multiple-variable linear model allows for near-perfect predictions of the CSPI Meh.
Bias – U.S. Employment Statistics • Came from United States Bureau of Labor Statistics • Based on a sample • Samples drawn from Unemployment Insurance papers • Large corporations more likely to be sampled • Could be sample bias • Large corporations more likely to offshore jobs? • Voluntary response survey • Non-response bias • Response bias • Employers could over-report #’s of programmers • Low #’s could indicate offshoring
Bias - CSPI • Source: Statistics Canada (E-Stat) • No bias could be detected • Some data taken from International Data Corporation
Wiki • http://ancasterdatafarruggia.wikispaces.com/Hogg%2C+R • You can view the bibliography there as well.