TY - GEN
T1 - Neutrality and epistasis in program space
AU - Renzullo, Joseph
AU - Weimer, Westley
AU - Moses, Melanie
AU - Forrest, Stephanie
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 ACM.
PY - 2018/6/2
Y1 - 2018/6/2
N2 - Neutral networks in biology often contain diverse solutions with equal fitness, which can be useful when environments (requirements) change over time. In this paper, we present a method for studying neutral networks in software. In these networks, we find multiple solutions to held-out test cases (latent bugs), suggesting that neutral software networks also exhibit relevant diversity. We also observe instances of positive epistasis between random mutations, i.e. interactions that collectively increase fitness. Positive epistasis is rare as a fraction of the total search space but significant as a fraction of the objective space: 9% of the repairs we found to look (and 4.63% across all programs analyzed) were produced by positive interactions between mutations. Further, the majority (62.50%) of unique repairs are instances of positive epistasis.
AB - Neutral networks in biology often contain diverse solutions with equal fitness, which can be useful when environments (requirements) change over time. In this paper, we present a method for studying neutral networks in software. In these networks, we find multiple solutions to held-out test cases (latent bugs), suggesting that neutral software networks also exhibit relevant diversity. We also observe instances of positive epistasis between random mutations, i.e. interactions that collectively increase fitness. Positive epistasis is rare as a fraction of the total search space but significant as a fraction of the objective space: 9% of the repairs we found to look (and 4.63% across all programs analyzed) were produced by positive interactions between mutations. Further, the majority (62.50%) of unique repairs are instances of positive epistasis.
KW - automated software engineering
KW - biological networks
KW - network science
KW - software evolution
KW - software testing and debugging
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85054619081&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85054619081&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3194810.3194812
DO - 10.1145/3194810.3194812
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85054619081
SN - 9781450357531
T3 - Proceedings - International Conference on Software Engineering
SP - 1
EP - 8
BT - Proceedings - 2018 ACM/IEEE 4th International Genetic Improvement Workshop, GI 2018
PB - IEEE Computer Society
T2 - 2018 ACM/IEEE 4th International Genetic Improvement Workshop, GI 2018, Held at 40th International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE 2018
Y2 - 2 June 2018
ER -