iSNEAK: Partial Ordering as Heuristics for Model-Based Reasoning in Software Engineering

A "partial ordering" is a way to heuristically order a set of examples (partial orderings are a set where, for certain pairs of elements, one precedes the other). While these orderings may only be approximate, they can be useful for guiding a search towards better regions of the data. To illustrate the value of that technique, this paper presents iSNEAK, an incremental human-in-the-loop AI problem solver. iSNEAK uses partial orderings and feedback from humans to prune the space of options. Further, in experiments with a dozen software models of increasing size and complexity (with up to 10,000 variables), iSNEAK only asked a handful of questions to return human-acceptable solutions that outperformed the prior state-of-the-art. We propose the use of partial orderings and tools like iSNEAK to solve the information overload problem where human experts grow fatigued and make mistakes when they are asked too many questions. iSNEAK mitigates the information overload problem since it allows humans to explore complex problem spaces in far less time, with far less effort.