Media type: E-Article Title: Modularity, reuse, and hierarchy: Measuring complexity by measuring structure and organization Contributor: Hornby, Gregory S. imprint: Wiley, 2007 Published in: Complexity Language: English DOI: 10.1002/cplx.20202 ISSN: 1076-2787; 1099-0526 Keywords: Multidisciplinary ; General Computer Science Origination: Footnote: Description: <jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>To develop better complexity measures, a reasonable approach is to base them on those principles of design that designers use. Modularity, reuse, and hierarchy (MR&H) have been identified by engineers as useful principles for designing complex systems, and these characteristics can be seen in Nature. Here, we develop metrics for each of MR&H, and then use them to develop several metrics of structure and organization. Further, we propose to evaluate complexity measures both empirically and on a set of abstract object‐construction examples. After applying these tests to a handful of previously defined complexity measures, as well as ones we define here, we find that only two of our measures pass both sets of tests. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity, 2007</jats:p>