English

Kolmogorov Complexity of Categories

Category Theory 2013-06-13 v1 Information Theory Logic in Computer Science Programming Languages math.IT Logic

Abstract

Kolmogorov complexity theory is used to tell what the algorithmic informational content of a string is. It is defined as the length of the shortest program that describes the string. We present a programming language that can be used to describe categories, functors, and natural transformations. With this in hand, we define the informational content of these categorical structures as the shortest program that describes such structures. Some basic consequences of our definition are presented including the fact that equivalent categories have equal Kolmogorov complexity. We also prove different theorems about what can and cannot be described by our programming language.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1306.2675,
  title  = {Kolmogorov Complexity of Categories},
  author = {Noson S. Yanofsky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1306.2675},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

16 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T00:32:21.879Z