Related papers: A Theory of Black-Box Tests

Testing has become an indispensable activity of software development, yet writing good and relevant tests remains a quite challenging task. One well-known problem is that it often is impossible or unrealistic to test for every outcome, as…

Plausibility measures are structures for reasoning in the face of uncertainty that generalize probabilities, unifying them with weaker structures like possibility measures and comparative probability relations. So far, the theory of…

We aim at measuring the influence of the nondeterministic choices of a part of a system on its ability to satisfy a specification. For this purpose, we apply the concept of Shapley values to verification as a means to evaluate how important…

Context: The complexity of modern safety-critical systems in industries keep on increasing due to the rising number of features and functionalities. This calls for formal methods in order to entrust confidence in such systems. Nevertheless,…

In this paper we deal with verification of safety properties of term-rewriting systems. The verification problem is translated to a purely logical problem of finding a finite countermodel for a first-order formula, which further resolved by…

We can never be certain that a software system is correct simply by testing it, but with every additional successful test we become less uncertain about its correctness. In absence of source code or elaborate specifications and models,…

Structural proof theory is praised for being a symbolic approach to reasoning and proofs, in which one can define schemas for reasoning steps and manipulate proofs as a mathematical structure. For this to be possible, proof systems must be…

System integration testing is the process of testing a system by the stepwise integration of sub-components. Usually these sub-components are already verified to guarantee their correct functional behavior. By integration of these verified…

In this paper, we build a new test of rational expectations based on the marginal distributions of realizations and subjective beliefs. This test is widely applicable, including in the common situation where realizations and beliefs are…

We study the problem of conditional two-sample testing, which aims to determine whether two populations have the same distribution after accounting for confounding factors. This problem commonly arises in various applications, such as…

We introduce a technology to formally verify that a software system satisfies a temporal specification of functional correctness, without revealing the system itself. Our method combines a deductive approach to model checking to obtain a…

We introduce a notion of real-valued reward testing for probabilistic processes by extending the traditional nonnegative-reward testing with negative rewards. In this richer testing framework, the may and must preorders turn out to be…

A recent experiment testing the necessity of complex numbers in the standard formulation of quantum theory is recreated using IBM quantum computers. To motivate the experiment, we present a basic construction for real-valued quantum theory.…

This paper develops a process-based account of scientific explanation that reconceives grounding in terms of stabilisation. Grounding theories capture hierarchical dependence but lack criteria for when explanations remain adequate under…

The contribution of this paper is threefold: first, it defines a framework for modelling component-based systems, as well as a formalization of integration rules to combine their behavior. This is based on finite state machines (FSM).…

The combination of deep neural nets and theory-driven models, which we call deep grey-box modeling, can be inherently interpretable to some extent thanks to the theory backbone. Deep grey-box models are usually learned with a regularized…

This work presents a framework for control theory based on constructive analysis to account for discrepancy between mathematical results and their implementation in a computer, also referred to as computational uncertainty. In control…

Traditionally, practitioners use formal methods pre-dominately for one half of the quality-assurance process: verification (do we build the software right?). The other half -- validation (do we build the right software?) -- has been given…

We propose a local model-checking proof system for a fragment of CTL. The rules of the proof system are motivated by the well-known fixed-point characterisation of CTL based on unfolding of the temporal operators. To guarantee termination…

The validation of requirements is a fundamental step in the development process of safety-critical systems. In safety critical applications such as aerospace, avionics and railways, the use of formal methods is of paramount importance both…