No quality without equality

Quality control mechanisms play an important role in improving software quality. However, quality improvement requires us to customize and calibrate these mechanisms to particular development environments. To do this, managers must understand how quality mechanisms affect developers and, in turn, how developers and their perspectives affect quality mechanisms. Otherwise, calibration and improvement are uncontrolled. Managers must recognize that software developers do not form a homogeneous group. Different developers may have different thoughts about and reactions to the use of formal quality mechanisms, which makes optimizing quality control a tricky business. Indeed, developers may have significantly different views of what quality itself means. To implement effective quality-control tools and practices, managers must understand these different developer attitudes. When differentiating types of developers, we often classify them in terms of their experience with different domains, languages, tools, and practices. My research reveals that we may want to look also at the differences in attitudes between men and women     

MPSQAR:无损语义的量化关联规则挖掘算法(英文)

在挖掘量化关联规则的过程中,由于对量化值的划分,将产生语义损失。为避免这种情况,提出基于无损语义的算法MPSQAR来处理量化关联规则的挖掘。主要工作包括:(1)提出规泛化量化值的新方法;(2)提出反映属性值分布的属性权重设计方法;(3)扩展加权关联规则模型以处理量化关联规则,避免量化值的划分;(4)提出挖掘传统布尔关联规则和量化关联规则的集成方法;实验表明算法MPSQAR的有效性和时间消耗随时间趋势呈线性增长。     

语义转换--直接指称语义到接续指称语义

指称语义分为直接指称语义和接续指称语义,其中后一种语义描述的难度较大,给出了直接指称语义描述到接续指称语义描述的转换方法,这就使得这种语义转换的自动化成为可能．转换算法揭示了直接指称语义与接续指称语义之间的内在关系,同时也提供了写接续指称语义描述的有效方法．当需要检验同一种语言的直接指称语义描述和接续指称语义描述是否等价时,提供的技术是很有用的。     

Global Interoperability Using Semantics, Standards, Science and Technology (GIST)

“Global Interoperability Using Semantics, Standards, Science and Technology” is a concept that is predicated on the assumption that the semantic integration, frameworks and standards that support information exchange, and advances in science and technology can enable information-systems interoperability for many diverse users. This paper recommends technologies and approaches for enabling interoperability across a wide spectrum of political, geographical, and organizational levels, e.g. coalition, federal, state, tribal, regional, non government, and private. These recommendations represent steps toward the goal of the Semantic Web, where computers understand information on web sites through knowledge representations, agents, and ontologies.     

The Semantics of "Semantics"

Outside of computer science, semantics is the providence of philosophy, where we talk about what we mean when we talk, as well as ontology (what there is to know) and epistemology (how we know it). The nice thing about computer science is that, in contrast to philosophy, we can establish whether different representations make a computational difference. That's what makes what we do engineering/science. In this paper, the author distinguished the meaning of semantics (in programming) from ontologies and logics.     

Combinatorial Semantics: Semantics for Frequent Validity

In ordinary first–order logic, a valid inference in a language L is one in which the conclusion is true in every model of the language in which the premises are true. To accommodate inductive/uncertain/probabilistic/nonmonotonic inference, we weaken that demand to the demand that the conclusion be true in a large proportion of the models in which the relevant premises are true. More generally, we say that an inference is [p,q] valid if its conclusion is true in a proportion lying between p and q of those models in which the relevant premises are true. If we include a statistical variable binding operator "%" in our language, there are many quite general (and useful) things we can say about uncertain validity. A surprising result is that some of these things may conflict with Bayesian conditionalization.     

Holism,Conceptual-Role Semantics,and Syntactic Semantics

This essay continues my investigation of `syntactic semantics': the theory that, pace Searle's Chinese-Room Argument, syntax does suffice for semantics (in particular, for the semantics needed for a computational cognitive theory of natural-language understanding). Here, I argue that syntactic semantics (which is internal and first-person) is what has been called a conceptual-role semantics: The meaning of any expression is the role that it plays in the complete system of expressions. Such a `narrow', conceptual-role semantics is the appropriate sort of semantics to account (from an `internal', or first-person perspective) for how a cognitive agent understands language. Some have argued for the primacy of external, or `wide', semantics, while others have argued for a two-factor analysis. But, although two factors can be specified–-one internal and first-person, the other only specifiable in an external, third-person way–-only the internal, first-person one is needed for understanding how someone understands. A truth-conditional semantics can still be provided, but only from a third-person perspective.     

Gamma的语义研究

在推导程序属性方面,公理语义比操作语义具有更多的优点。本文定义Gamma 的时态语义,它是已有工作的进一步精确化;本文证明这种时态语义与结构化操作语义是一致的。     

Semantics of trees

We introduce F-structures and investigate interpretations of trees in F-structures. Thus trees are viewed as schemes of computations in F-structures. Every tree is shown to be strongly equivalent to some chain-free tree. This enables us to use the grammatical codings of [2] to define formulas for arbitrary interpreted trees. We also introduce a syntactic way to compute the values of interpreted trees.     

Semantics of EqL

The formal semantics of a novel language, called EqL, are presented for first-order functional and Horn logic programming. An EqL program is a set of conditional pattern-directed rules, where the conditions are expressed as a conjunction of equations. The programming paradigm provided by this language may be called equational programming. The declarative semantics of equations is given in terms of their complete set of solutions, and the operational semantics for solving equations is an extension of reduction, called object refinement. The correctness of the operational semantics is established through the soundness and completeness theorems. Examples are given to illustrate the language and its semantics.<>     

Semantics of sub-probabilistic programs

The aim of this paper is to extend the probabilistic choice in probabilistic programs to sub-probabilistic choice, i.e., of the form (p)P ^⋈(q)Q where p + q ⩽ 1. It means that program P is executed with probability p and program Q is executed with probability q. Then, starting from an initial state, the execution of a sub-probabilistic program results in a sub-probability distribution. This paper presents two equivalent semantics for a sub-probabilistic while-programming language. One of these interprets programs as sub-probabilistic distributions on state spaces via denotational semantics. The other interprets programs as bounded expectation transformers via wp-semantics. This paper proposes an axiomatic systems for total logic, and proves its soundness and completeness in a classical pattern on the structure of programs.     

Semantics of probabilistic programs

This paper presents two complementary but equivalent semantics for a high level probabilistic programming language. One of these interprets programs as partial measurable functions on a measurable space. The other interprets programs as continuous linear operators on a Banach space of measures. It is shown how the ordered domains of Scott and others are embedded naturally into these spaces. We use the semantics to prove a general result about probabilistic programs, namely, that a program's behavior is completely determined by its action on fixed inputs.     

Semantics of under-determined expressions

Some specification languages, such as VDM-SL, allow expressions whose values are not fully determined. This may be convenient in cases where the choice of value should be left to a later stage of development.We consider a simple functional language including such under-determined expressions and present a denotational semantics for the language along with a set of proof rules for reasoning about properties of under-determined expressions. One of the specific problems considered is the combination of under-determinedness and a least fixed point semantics of recursion. Soundness of the proof rules is also discussed.     

Semantics of interference control

An approach to syntactic control of interference described by Reynolds (1978) is shown to be sound using a denotational semantic model.     

Semantics of context-free languages

Meaning may be assigned to a string in a context-free language by defining attributes of the symbols in a derivation tree for that string. The attributes can be defined by functions associated with each production in the grammar. This paper examines the implications of this process when some of the attributes are synthesized, i.e., defined solely in terms of attributes of thedescendants of the corresponding nonterminal symbol, while other attributes are inherited, i.e., defined in terms of attributes of theancestors of the nonterminal symbol. An algorithm is given which detects when such semantic rules could possibly lead to circular definition of some attributes. An example is given of a simple programming language defined with both inherited and synthesized attributes, and the method of definition is compared to other techniques for formal specification of semantics which have appeared in the literature.