A comparison of different criteria for selecting binary tests in diagnostic keys

The problem of selecting tests to be used in nonprobabilistic binary diagnostic keys is discussed. Five selection criteria are compared and it is shown that all except a new criterion suffer from some deficiency. This criterion cannot be extended easily to cope with multi-response tests but another criterion, which behaves satisfactorily with binary tests, can be extended in some circumstances. The only criterion which can always be used with multi-response tests is least satisfactory for binary tests

Separating codes and traffic monitoring

International audienceThis paper studies the problem of traffic monitoring which consists of differentiating a set of walks on a directed graph by placing sensors on as few arcs as possible. The problem of characterising a set of individuals by testing as few attributes as possible is already well-known, but traffic monitoring presents new challenges that the previous models of separation fall short from modelling such as taking into account the multiplicity and order of the arcs in a walk. We introduce a new and stronger model of separation based on languages that generalises the traffic monitoring problem. We study three subproblems with practical applications and develop methods to solve them by combining integer linear programming, separating codes and language theory