Causal Inference and Software Engineering
Exploring causality in Software Engineering
I have recently developed an interest in causality, in statistical approaches that can be used to establish evidence of it, and in its relation to software engineering.
There are lots of interesting approaches from Casual Inference that could, in the context of Software Testing, lead to new and powerful ways to reason about software behaviour, and in particular the relationship between particular inputs and buggy behaviour.
This work is being carried out on the EPSRC-funded CITCOM project, with my colleagues Rob Hierons, Michael Foster and Andy Clark, along with Nick Latimer in ScHARR and David Wagg in Mechanical Engineering. The project also features (or will feature!) collaborations with several industrial partners (STFC and DSTL), as well as international academic partners (Robert Feldt at Chalmers and Andy Podgurski at Case Western Reserve).
More details of the grant are available here.
Funding
- 2021-2024 - Causal Inference for Testing Computational Models (CITCoM), EPSRC (£670,838)
Publications
- “Test case generation for agent-based models: A systematic literature review” by Andrew G. Clark, Neil Walkinshaw and Rob Hierons accepted to the Journal of Information and Software Technology (IST)