Efficient implementation of the Yule-Simon stochastic process for modeling internet and software development activities

TONELLI, ROBERTO;Concas G;Locci M.

2009-01-01

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Abstract

We develop three different algorithms for implementing the Preferential Attachment mechanism, with regards to the Yule process, able to describe how statistical power-law distributions, for various properties of OO software systems and of the internet, are generated. Since modern software systems have reached a huge dimension, counting tens, or hundreds of thousand, of units or modules, the efficiency of algorithms for their simulation is a critical issue. We discuss their efficiency for different parameters value, their scaling with system size, and analyze in which cases one is preferable with respect to the others.