Applying formal concepts to learning systems validation

In the problem area of evaluating complex software systems, there are two distinguished areas of research, development, and application identified by the two buzzwords validation and verification, respectively. From the perspective adopted by the authors, verification is usually more formally based and, thus, can be supported by formal reasoning tools like theorem provers, for instance. The scope of verification approaches is limited by the difficulty of finding a sufficiently complete formalization to build upon. In paramount realistic problem domains, validation seems to be more appropriate, although it is less stringent in character and, therefore, validation results are often less definite. The aim of this paper is to exemplify a validation approach based on a clear and thoroughly formal theory. In this way, validation and verification should be brought closer to each other. To allow for precise and sufficiently clear results, the authors have selected the application domain of algorithms and systems for learning formal languages. By means of the validation toolkit TIC, some series of validation experiments have been performed. The results are presented for the sake of illustrating the underlying formal concepts in use. Comparing the validity of one learning approach to the invalidity of another one can be seen as an interesting result in its own right.