Related papers: Coding is hard
The representation of mathematical objects in terms of (more) basic ones is part and parcel of (the foundations of) mathematics. In the usual foundations of mathematics, i.e. $\textsf{ZFC}$ set theory, all mathematical objects are…
I have argued elsewhere that second order logic provides a foundation for mathematics much in the same way as set theory does, despite the fact that the former is second order and the latter first order, but second order logic is marred by…
Many proofs in discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science are based on the probabilistic method. To prove the existence of a good object, we pick a random object and show that it is bad with low probability. This method is…
Specifying a computational problem requires fixing encodings for input and output: encoding graphs as adjacency matrices, characters as integers, integers as bit strings, and vice versa. For such discrete data, the actual encoding is…
The topic of this paper is the subtle interplay between countability and representations. In particular, we establish that the definition of countability of a certain set $X$ crucially hinges on the associated equivalence relation $=_{X}$.…
Turing's famous 'machine' framework provides an intuitively clear conception of 'computing with real numbers'. A recursive counterexample to a theorem shows that the theorem does not hold when restricted to computable objects. These…
In many instances in first order logic or computable algebra, classical theorems show that many problems are undecidable for general structures, but become decidable if some rigidity is imposed on the structure. For example, the set of…
Learning rich and compact representations is an open topic in many fields such as object recognition or image retrieval. Deep neural networks have made a major breakthrough during the last few years for these tasks but their representations…
We study the reverse mathematics of the theory of countable second-countable topological spaces, with a focus on compactness. We show that the general theory of such spaces works as expected in the subsystem $\mathsf{ACA}_0$ of second-order…
In the recent years, the notion of rank metric in the context of coding theory has known many interesting developments in terms of applications such as space time coding, network coding or public key cryptography. These applications raised…
Choosing an encoding over binary strings for input/output to/by a Turing Machine is usually straightforward and/or inessential for discrete data (like graphs), but delicate -- heavily affecting computability and even more computational…
In deduction modulo, a theory is not represented by a set of axioms but by a congruence on propositions modulo which the inference rules of standard deductive systems---such as for instance natural deduction---are applied. Therefore, the…
Representation theorems relate seemingly complex objects to concrete, more tractable ones. In this paper, we take advantage of the abstraction power of category theory and provide a general representation theorem for a wide class of…
Many applications of denotational semantics, such as higher-order model checking or the complexity of normalization, rely on finite semantics for monomorphic type systems. We exhibit such a finite semantics for a polymorphic purely linear…
Many representation schemes combining first-order logic and probability have been proposed in recent years. Progress in unifying logical and probabilistic inference has been slower. Existing methods are mainly variants of lifted variable…
Automated theorem proving in first-order logic is an active research area which is successfully supported by machine learning. While there have been various proposals for encoding logical formulas into numerical vectors -- from simple…
A major part of computability theory focuses on the analysis of a few structures of central importance. As a tool, the method of coding with first-order formulas has been applied with great success. For instance, in the c.e. Turing degrees,…
Algorithmic meta-theorems state that problems definable in a fixed logic can be solved efficiently on structures with certain properties. An example is Courcelle's Theorem, which states that all problems expressible in monadic second-order…
We study the logic obtained by endowing the language of first-order arithmetic with second-order measure quantifiers. This new kind of quantification allows us to express that the argument formula is true in a certain portion of all…
This talk describes how a combination of symbolic computation techniques with first-order theorem proving can be used for solving some challenges of automating program analysis, in particular for generating and proving properties about the…