3,211 research outputs found
Can we avoid high coupling?
It is considered good software design practice to organize source code into modules and to favour within-module connections (cohesion) over between-module connections (coupling), leading to the oft-repeated maxim "low coupling/high cohesion". Prior research into network theory and its application to software systems has found evidence that many important properties in real software systems exhibit approximately scale-free structure, including coupling; researchers have claimed that such scale-free structures are ubiquitous. This implies that high coupling must be unavoidable, statistically speaking, apparently contradicting standard ideas about software structure. We present a model that leads to the simple predictions that approximately scale-free structures ought to arise both for between-module connectivity and overall connectivity, and not as the result of poor design or optimization shortcuts. These predictions are borne out by our large-scale empirical study. Hence we conclude that high coupling is not avoidable--and that this is in fact quite reasonable
Emergence of a non-scaling degree distribution in bipartite networks: a numerical and analytical study
We study the growth of bipartite networks in which the number of nodes in one
of the partitions is kept fixed while the other partition is allowed to grow.
We study random and preferential attachment as well as combination of both. We
derive the exact analytical expression for the degree-distribution of all these
different types of attachments while assuming that edges are incorporated
sequentially, i.e., a single edge is added to the growing network in a time
step. We also provide an approximate expression for the case when more than one
edge are added in a time step. We show that depending on the relative weight
between random and preferential attachment, the degree-distribution of this
type of network falls into one of four possible regimes which range from a
binomial distribution for pure random attachment to an u-shaped distribution
for dominant preferential attachment
Outlier Edge Detection Using Random Graph Generation Models and Applications
Outliers are samples that are generated by different mechanisms from other
normal data samples. Graphs, in particular social network graphs, may contain
nodes and edges that are made by scammers, malicious programs or mistakenly by
normal users. Detecting outlier nodes and edges is important for data mining
and graph analytics. However, previous research in the field has merely focused
on detecting outlier nodes. In this article, we study the properties of edges
and propose outlier edge detection algorithms using two random graph generation
models. We found that the edge-ego-network, which can be defined as the induced
graph that contains two end nodes of an edge, their neighboring nodes and the
edges that link these nodes, contains critical information to detect outlier
edges. We evaluated the proposed algorithms by injecting outlier edges into
some real-world graph data. Experiment results show that the proposed
algorithms can effectively detect outlier edges. In particular, the algorithm
based on the Preferential Attachment Random Graph Generation model consistently
gives good performance regardless of the test graph data. Further more, the
proposed algorithms are not limited in the area of outlier edge detection. We
demonstrate three different applications that benefit from the proposed
algorithms: 1) a preprocessing tool that improves the performance of graph
clustering algorithms; 2) an outlier node detection algorithm; and 3) a novel
noisy data clustering algorithm. These applications show the great potential of
the proposed outlier edge detection techniques.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, journal pape
Innovation and Nested Preferential Growth in Chess Playing Behavior
Complexity develops via the incorporation of innovative properties. Chess is
one of the most complex strategy games, where expert contenders exercise
decision making by imitating old games or introducing innovations. In this
work, we study innovation in chess by analyzing how different move sequences
are played at the population level. It is found that the probability of
exploring a new or innovative move decreases as a power law with the frequency
of the preceding move sequence. Chess players also exploit already known move
sequences according to their frequencies, following a preferential growth
mechanism. Furthermore, innovation in chess exhibits Heaps' law suggesting
similarities with the process of vocabulary growth. We propose a robust
generative mechanism based on nested Yule-Simon preferential growth processes
that reproduces the empirical observations. These results, supporting the
self-similar nature of innovations in chess are important in the context of
decision making in a competitive scenario, and extend the scope of relevant
findings recently discovered regarding the emergence of Zipf's law in chess.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Europhysics Letters
(EPL
Finite-time influence systems and the Wisdom of Crowd effect
Recent contributions have studied how an influence system may affect the
wisdom of crowd phenomenon. In the so-called naive learning setting, a crowd of
individuals holds opinions that are statistically independent estimates of an
unknown parameter; the crowd is wise when the average opinion converges to the
true parameter in the limit of infinitely many individuals. Unfortunately, even
starting from wise initial opinions, a crowd subject to certain influence
systems may lose its wisdom. It is of great interest to characterize when an
influence system preserves the crowd wisdom effect. In this paper we introduce
and characterize numerous wisdom preservation properties of the basic
French-DeGroot influence system model. Instead of requiring complete
convergence to consensus as in the previous naive learning model by Golub and
Jackson, we study finite-time executions of the French-DeGroot influence
process and establish in this novel context the notion of prominent families
(as a group of individuals with outsize influence). Surprisingly, finite-time
wisdom preservation of the influence system is strictly distinct from its
infinite-time version. We provide a comprehensive treatment of various
finite-time wisdom preservation notions, counterexamples to meaningful
conjectures, and a complete characterization of equal-neighbor influence
systems
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