27,059 research outputs found
User-friendly Support for Common Concepts in a Lightweight Verifier
Machine verification of formal arguments can only increase our confidence in the correctness of those arguments, but the costs of employing machine verification still outweigh the benefits for some common kinds of formal reasoning activities. As a result, usability is becoming increasingly important in the design of formal verification tools. We describe the "aartifact" lightweight verification system, designed for processing formal arguments involving basic, ubiquitous mathematical concepts. The system is a prototype for investigating potential techniques for improving the usability of formal verification systems. It leverages techniques drawn both from existing work and from our own efforts. In addition to a parser for a familiar concrete syntax and a mechanism for automated syntax lookup, the system integrates (1) a basic logical inference algorithm, (2) a database of propositions governing common mathematical concepts, and (3) a data structure that computes congruence closures of expressions involving relations found in this database. Together, these components allow the system to better accommodate the expectations of users interested in verifying formal arguments involving algebraic and logical manipulations of numbers, sets, vectors, and related operators and predicates. We demonstrate the reasonable performance of this system on typical formal arguments and briefly discuss how the system's design contributed to its usability in two case studies
The AutoProof Verifier: Usability by Non-Experts and on Standard Code
Formal verification tools are often developed by experts for experts; as a
result, their usability by programmers with little formal methods experience
may be severely limited. In this paper, we discuss this general phenomenon with
reference to AutoProof: a tool that can verify the full functional correctness
of object-oriented software. In particular, we present our experiences of using
AutoProof in two contrasting contexts representative of non-expert usage.
First, we discuss its usability by students in a graduate course on software
verification, who were tasked with verifying implementations of various sorting
algorithms. Second, we evaluate its usability in verifying code developed for
programming assignments of an undergraduate course. The first scenario
represents usability by serious non-experts; the second represents usability on
"standard code", developed without full functional verification in mind. We
report our experiences and lessons learnt, from which we derive some general
suggestions for furthering the development of verification tools with respect
to improving their usability.Comment: In Proceedings F-IDE 2015, arXiv:1508.0338
Lightweight Formal Verification in Classroom Instruction of Reasoning about Functional Code
In college courses dealing with material that requires mathematical rigor, the adoption of a machine-readable representation for formal arguments can be advantageous. Students can focus on a specific collection of constructs that are represented consistently. Examples and counterexamples can be evaluated. Assignments can be assembled and checked with the help of an automated formal reasoning system. However, usability and accessibility do not have a high priority and are not addressed sufficiently well in the design of many existing machine-readable representations and corresponding formal reasoning systems. In earlier work [Lap09], we attempt to address this broad problem by proposing several specific design criteria organized around the notion of a natural context: the sphere of awareness a working human user maintains of the relevant constructs, arguments, experiences, and background materials necessary to accomplish the task at hand. We report on our attempt to evaluate our proposed design criteria by deploying within the classroom a lightweight formal verification system designed according to these criteria. The lightweight formal verification system was used within the instruction of a common application of formal reasoning: proving by induction formal propositions about functional code. We present all of the formal reasoning examples and assignments considered during this deployment, most of which are drawn directly from an introductory text on functional programming. We demonstrate how the design of the system improves the effectiveness and understandability of the examples, and how it aids in the instruction of basic formal reasoning techniques. We make brief remarks about the practical and administrative implications of the system’s design from the perspectives of the student, the instructor, and the grader
A gentle transition from Java programming to Web Services using XML-RPC
Exposing students to leading edge vocational areas of relevance such as Web Services can be difficult. We show a lightweight approach by embedding a key component of Web Services within a Level 3 BSc module in Distributed Computing. We present a ready to use collection of lecture slides and student activities based on XML-RPC. In
addition we show that this material addresses the central topics in the context of web services as identified by Draganova (2003)
Ontology: A Linked Data Hub for Mathematics
In this paper, we present an ontology of mathematical knowledge concepts that
covers a wide range of the fields of mathematics and introduces a balanced
representation between comprehensive and sensible models. We demonstrate the
applications of this representation in information extraction, semantic search,
and education. We argue that the ontology can be a core of future integration
of math-aware data sets in the Web of Data and, therefore, provide mappings
onto relevant datasets, such as DBpedia and ScienceWISE.Comment: 15 pages, 6 images, 1 table, Knowledge Engineering and the Semantic
Web - 5th International Conferenc
An evaluation framework to drive future evolution of a research prototype
The Open Source Component Artefact Repository (OSCAR) requires
evaluation to confirm its suitability as a development environment
for distributed software engineers. The evaluation will take note of
several factors including usability of OSCAR as a stand-alone system,
scalability and maintainability of the system and novel features not
provided by existing artefact management systems. Additionally, the
evaluation design attempts to address some of the omissions (due to
time constraints) from the industrial partner evaluations.
This evaluation is intended to be a prelude to the evaluation of the
awareness support being added to OSCAR; thus establishing a baseline
to which the effects of awareness support may be compared
Clafer: Lightweight Modeling of Structure, Behaviour, and Variability
Embedded software is growing fast in size and complexity, leading to intimate
mixture of complex architectures and complex control. Consequently, software
specification requires modeling both structures and behaviour of systems.
Unfortunately, existing languages do not integrate these aspects well, usually
prioritizing one of them. It is common to develop a separate language for each
of these facets. In this paper, we contribute Clafer: a small language that
attempts to tackle this challenge. It combines rich structural modeling with
state of the art behavioural formalisms. We are not aware of any other modeling
language that seamlessly combines these facets common to system and software
modeling. We show how Clafer, in a single unified syntax and semantics, allows
capturing feature models (variability), component models, discrete control
models (automata) and variability encompassing all these aspects. The language
is built on top of first order logic with quantifiers over basic entities (for
modeling structures) combined with linear temporal logic (for modeling
behaviour). On top of this semantic foundation we build a simple but expressive
syntax, enriched with carefully selected syntactic expansions that cover
hierarchical modeling, associations, automata, scenarios, and Dwyer's property
patterns. We evaluate Clafer using a power window case study, and comparing it
against other notations that substantially overlap with its scope (SysML, AADL,
Temporal OCL and Live Sequence Charts), discussing benefits and perils of using
a single notation for the purpose
LEARNING HOW STUDENTS ARE LEARNING IN PROGRAMMING LAB SESSIONS
Department of Computer Science and EngineeringProgramming lab sessions help students learn to program in a practical way. Although these sessions
are typically valuable to students, it is not uncommon for some participants to fall behind throughout
the sessions and leave without fully grasping the concepts covered during the session. In my thesis, I
will be presenting LabEX, a system for instructors to understand students' progress and learning
experience during programming lab sessions. LabEX utilizes statistical techniques that help
distinguishing struggling students and understand their degree of struggle. LabEX also helps instructors
to provide in-situ feedback to students with its real-time code review. LabEX was evaluated in an entry-level
programming course taken by more than two hundred students in UNIST, establishing that it
increases the quality of programming lab sessions.ope
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