Analyzing Problem Instance Space Based on Difficulty-distance Correlation

Finding or automatically generating problem instance is useful for algorithm analysis/test. The topic has been of interest in the field of hardware/software engineering and theory of computation. We apply objective value-distance correlation analysis to problem spaces, as previous researchers applied it to solution spaces. According to problems, we define the objective function by (1) execution time of tested algorithm or (2) its optimality; this definition is interpreted as difficulty of the problem instance being solved. Our correlation analysis is based on the following aspects: (1) change of correlation when we use different algorithms or different distance functions for the same problem, (2) change of that when we improve the tested algorithm, (3) relation between a problem instance space and the solution space for the same problem. Our research demonstrates the way of problem instance space analysis and will accelerate the problem instance space analysis as an initiative research.