Modularity, reuse, and hierarchy: Measuring complexity by measuring structure and organization: Research Articles

  • Authors:
  • Gregory S. Hornby

  • Affiliations:
  • University of California Santa Cruz, NASA Ames Research Center MS 269-3, Moffett Field, California 94035-1000

  • Venue:
  • Complexity - Complex Systems Engineering
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

To develop better complexity measures, a reasonable approach is to base them on those principles of design that designers use. Modularity, reuse, and hierarchy (MR&H) have been identified by engineers as useful principles for designing complex systems, and these characteristics can be seen in Nature. Here, we develop metrics for each of MR&H, and then use them to develop several metrics of structure and organization. Further, we propose to evaluate complexity measures both empirically and on a set of abstract object-construction examples. After applying these tests to a handful of previously defined complexity measures, as well as ones we define here, we find that only two of our measures pass both sets of tests. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity, 2007