Related papers: Getting around the Halting Problem
In considering the reliability of numerical programs, it is normal to "limit our study to the semantics dealing with numerical precision" (Martel, 2005). On the other hand, there is a great deal of work on the reliability of programs that…
Our model is a generalized linear programming relaxation of a much studied random K-SAT problem. Specifically, a set of linear constraints C on K variables is fixed. From a pool of n variables, K variables are chosen uniformly at random and…
A fundamental problem in program verification concerns the termination of simple linear loops of the form x := u ; while Bx >= b do {x := Ax + a} where x is a vector of variables, u, a, and c are integer vectors, and A and B are integer…
Circuit discovery has gradually become one of the prominent methods for mechanistic interpretability, and research on circuit completeness has also garnered increasing attention. Methods of circuit discovery that do not guarantee…
The equivalence problem for unambiguous grammars is an important, but very difficult open question in formal language theory. Consider the \emph{limited} equivalence problem for unambiguous grammars -- for two unambiguous grammars $G_1$ and…
Quantum span program algorithms for function evaluation commonly have reduced query complexity when promised that the input has a certain structure. We design a modified span program algorithm to show these speed-ups persist even without…
Given a string $s$ of length $n$ over a general alphabet and an integer $k$, the problem is to decide whether $s$ is a concatenation of $k$ nonempty palindromes. Two previously known solutions for this problem work in time $O(kn)$ and…
In this paper, we focus on the problem of existence and computing of small and large stable models. We show that for every fixed integer k, there is a linear-time algorithm to decide the problem LSM (large stable models problem): does a…
Normal forms for logic programs under stable/answer set semantics are introduced. We argue that these forms can simplify the study of program properties, mainly consistency. The first normal form, called the {\em kernel} of the program, is…
The clustering of integers with equal total stopping times has long been observed in the 3x + 1 Problem, and a number of elementary results about it have been used repeatedly in the literature. In this paper we introduce a simple…
Let A, B, C, D be given finite sets of pairs of n-by-n complex matrices. We describe an algorithm to determine, with finitely many computations, whether there is a single unitary matrix U such that each pair of matrices in A is unitarily…
The Halting problem of a quantum computer is considered. It is shown that if halting of a quantum computer takes place the associated dynamics is described by an irreversible operator.
Many programs allow the user to input data several times during its execution. If the program runs forever the user may input data infinitely often. A program terminates if it terminates no matter what the user does. We discuss various ways…
For integers a and n>0, let a(n) denote the residue class {x\in Z: x=a (mod n)}. Let A be a collection {a_s(n_s)}_{s=1}^k of finitely many residue classes such that A covers all the integers at least m times but {a_s(n_s)}_{s=1}^{k-1} does…
The general setting of this work is the constraint-based synthesis of termination arguments. We consider a restricted class of programs called lasso programs. The termination argument for a lasso program is a pair of a ranking function and…
In the last three decades, the $k$-SUM hypothesis has emerged as a satisfying explanation of long-standing time barriers for a variety of algorithmic problems. Yet to this day, the literature knows of only few proven consequences of a…
Given a power grid modeled by a network together with equations describing the power flows, power generation and consumption, and the laws of physics, the so-called N-k problem asks whether there exists a set of k or fewer arcs whose…
We consider the discrepancy problem of coloring $n$ intervals with $k$ colors such that at each point on the line, the maximal difference between the number of intervals of any two colors is minimal. Somewhat surprisingly, a coloring with…
For $n$ positive numbers ($a_k$, $1\leq k \leq n$), enhanced inequalities about the arithmetic mean ($A_n \equiv \frac{\sum_ka_k}{n}$) and the geometric mean ($G_n\equiv \sqrt[n]{\Pi_ka_k}$) are found if some numbers are known, namely,…
We study the following problem: given a class of logic programs C, determine the maximum number of stable models of a program from C. We establish the maximum for the class of all logic programs with at most n clauses, and for the class of…