Automatic Generation of Optimal Reductions of Distributions
For researchers in formal verification and distribution theory, this work provides an automated method to reduce complexity of decomposability checking, though it offers only a partial solution.
The paper addresses automatic generation of optimal reductions of distributions to improve decomposability verification. It proposes an incremental algorithm with backtracking and a validation procedure using substitution-based proofs and fixed counterexample templates.
A reduction of a source distribution is a collection of smaller sized distributions that are collectively equivalent to the source distribution with respect to the property of decomposability. That is, an arbitrary language is decomposable with respect to the source distribution if and only if it is decomposable with respect to each smaller sized distribution (in the reduction). The notion of reduction of distributions has previously been proposed to improve the complexity of decomposability verification. In this work, we address the problem of generating (optimal) reductions of distributions automatically. A (partial) solution to this problem is provided, which consists of 1) an incremental algorithm for the production of candidate reductions and 2) a reduction validation procedure. In the incremental production stage, backtracking is applied whenever a candidate reduction that cannot be validated is produced. A strengthened substitution-based proof technique is used for reduction validation, while a fixed template of candidate counter examples is used for reduction refutation; put together, they constitute our (partial) solution to the reduction verification problem. In addition, we show that a recursive approach for the generation of (small) reductions is easily supported.