SIMPLIFYING BOOLEAN NETWORKS

Kurt A. Richardson
Additional contact information
Kurt A. Richardson: ISCE Research, Mansfield, MA, USA

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), 2005, vol. 08, issue 04, 365-381

Abstract: This paper explores the compressibility of complex systems by considering the simplification of Boolean networks. A method, which is similar to that reported by Bastolla and Parisi,4,5is considered that is based on the removal of frozen nodes, or stable variables, and network "leaves," i.e. those nodes with outdegree = 0. The method uses a random sampling approach to identify the minimum set of frozen nodes. This set contains the nodes that are frozen in all attractor schemes. Although the method can over-estimate the size of the minimum set of frozen nodes, it is found that the chances of finding this minimum set are considerably greater than finding the full attractor set using the same sampling rate. Given that the number of attractors not found for a particular Boolean network increases with the network size, for any given sampling rate, such a method provides an opportunity to either fully enumerate the attractor set for a particular network, or improve the accuracy of the random sampling approach. Indeed, the paper also shows that when it comes to the counting of attractors in an ensemble of Boolean networks, enhancing the random sample method with the simplification method presented results in a significant improvement in accuracy.

Keywords: Complexity theory; simplification; reduction; Boolean networks; Kauffman networks; attractors; phase space; decimation; simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219525905000518
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:acsxxx:v:08:y:2005:i:04:n:s0219525905000518

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0219525905000518

Access Statistics for this article

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS) is currently edited by Frank Schweitzer

More articles in Advances in Complex Systems (ACS) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().