Assorted Links on Statistical Automation

Why will validation of statistical methods be so important? This post contains 3 links, each of them about the value of a validation / replication protocol in a different area.

1. How did Intel keep Moore’s Law going?

   “This incredible growth rate could not be achieved by hiring an exponentially-growing number of design engineers. It was fulfilled by adopting new design methodologies and by introducing innovative design automation software at every processor generation. These methodologies and tools always applied principles of raising design abstraction, becoming increasingly precise in terms of circuit and parasitic modeling while simultaneously using ever-increasing levels of hierarchy, regularity, and automatic synthesis. As a rule, whenever a task became too painful to perform using the old methods, a new method and associated tool were conceived for solving the problem. This way, tools and design practices were evolving, always addressing the most labor-intensive task at hand. Naturally, the evolution of tools occurred bottom-up, from layout tools to circuit, logic, and architecture. Typically, at each abstraction level the verification problem was most painful, hence it was addressed first. The synthesis problem at that level was addressed much later.”

2. Building code validation software:
   “But SolarAPP goes a step further. For jurisdictions that have adopted it, SolarAPP can automatically issue a building permit - a human plan reviewer doesn’t need to sign off on the plans at all…
   What separates these successes from the many efforts that failed to pan out?

   For one, ResCheck, ComCheck, and SolarAPP are very narrowly focused - instead of trying to check an entire building against the entire code, each one only checks compliance against a very narrow list of code requirements. This allows development to proceed much faster, and makes it much more feasible to verify that the output is correct - SolarAPP, for instance, prints every single check that it does, and the list is short enough that examining it is actually practical.”

   The Ups and Downs of Automated Code Checking Software

3. .There are big nonlinear gains to making things composable.

Can we obsolete the journal submission process for statistical designs?