Software failures are common. They are so common that we got used to. Whenever a software fails, we try again and, probably, we submit a failure report to developers. Developers make use of these reports to track bugs, fix them, and release patches. And the cycle continues.

However, there are some software failures that cause(d) major disasters. For example, Ariane 5, a major space project, was destroyed in less than a minute after liftoff in 1996. After investigation, the problem seemed to be originating from a bad mapping of a 64-bit float to a 16-bit signed! A failed project and more than $500 millions lost because of a bad mapping on a line of code.

You have to search for some well-documented software failures. Out of them, you need to select one, study it, and document it:

Context: what is the software and when/where the software failure happened?

Reason: why the failure happened?

Error source: did the error occur during specification, design, implementation, and/or

validation?

What could have been done to avoid the failure?

If formal methods were used, were they going to help in avoiding the failure?