A portfolio-based analysis method for competition results

TL;DR

This paper introduces a portfolio-based analysis method for competition results, providing deeper insights into solver performance beyond traditional rankings, and demonstrates its application on MiniZinc Challenge data.

Contribution

It presents a novel portfolio-based analysis approach that offers complementary insights into solver performance in competitions, beyond conventional ranking methods.

Findings

Reveals solver strengths not evident in rankings

Provides a more nuanced performance comparison

Enhances understanding of solver complementarities

Abstract

Competitions such as the MiniZinc Challenges or the SAT competitions have been very useful sources for comparing performance of different solving approaches and for advancing the state-of-the-arts of the fields. Traditional competition setting often focuses on producing a ranking between solvers based on their average performance across a wide range of benchmark problems and instances. While this is a sensible way to assess the relative performance of solvers, such ranking does not necessarily reflect the full potential of a solver, especially when we want to utilise a portfolio of solvers instead of a single one for solving a new problem. In this paper, I will describe a portfolio-based analysis method which can give complementary insights into the performance of participating solvers in a competition. The method is demonstrated on the results of the MiniZinc Challenges and new insights gained from the portfolio viewpoint are presented.