Related papers: On the logical strength of Nash-Williams' theorem …
The famous theorem of Higman states that for any well-quasi-order (wqo) $Q$ the embeddability order on finite sequences over $Q$ is also wqo. In his celebrated 1965 paper, Nash-Williams established that the same conclusion holds even for…
This paper studies logical aspects of the notion of better quasi order, which has been introduced by C. Nash-Williams (Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 1965 & 1968). A central tool in the theory of better…
It has recently been shown that fairly strong axiom systems such as $\mathsf{ACA}_0$ cannot prove that the antichain with three elements is a better quasi order ($\mathsf{bqo}$). In the present paper, we give a complete characterization of…
We study the well-quasi-order (wqo) consisting of the set of finite trees with leaf labels coming from an arbitrary wqo $Q$, ordered by tree homomorphisms which respect the order on the labels. This is a variant of the usual Kruskal tree…
The notion of better quasi order ($\mathsf{BQO}$), due to Nash-Williams, is very fruitful mathematically and intriguing from the standpoint of logic, due to several long-standing open problems. In the present paper, we make a significant…
The minimal bad sequence argument due to Nash-Williams is a powerful tool in combinatorics with important implications for theoretical computer science. In particular, it yields a very elegant proof of Kruskal's theorem. At the same time,…
Generalized Higman's Theorem is the direct counterpart of Higman's Theorem that asserts the closure of the class of \emph{better} quasi-orders, instead of the class of \emph{well} quasi-orders, under the construction $P\mapsto P^{<\omega}$…
We present a relatively simple description of binary, definable subsets of models of weakly quasi-o-minimal theories. In particular, we closely describe definable linear orders and prove a weak version of the monotonicity theorem. We also…
We introduce the notions of triviality and order-triviality for global invariant types in an arbitrary first-order theory and show that they are well behaved in the NIP context. We show that these two notions agree for invariant global…
By reformulating a learning process of a set system L as a game between Teacher (presenter of data) and Learner (updater of the abstract independent set), we define the order type dim L of L to be the order type of the game tree. The theory…
The notion of well order admits an alternative definition in terms of embeddings between initial segments. We use the framework of reverse mathematics to investigate the logical strength of this definition and its connection with…
We give a simple proof that the first-order theory of well orders is axiomatized by transfinite induction, and that it is decidable.
In this paper the lightface $\Pi^{1}_{1}$-Comprehension axiom is shown to be proof-theoretically strong even over $\mbox{RCA}_{0}^{*}$, and we calibrate the proof-theoretic ordinals of weak fragments of the theory $\mbox{ID}_{1}$ of…
We use G\"odel's Dialectica interpretation to analyse Nash-Williams' elegant but non-constructive "minimal bad sequence" proof of Higman's Lemma. The result is a concise constructive proof of the lemma (for arbitrary decidable…
The well-quasi-orders (WQO) play an important role in various fields such as Computer Science, Logic or Graph Theory. Since the class of WQOs lacks closure under some important operations, the proof that a certain quasi-order is WQO…
Fra\"iss\'e's conjecture (proved by Laver) is implied by the $\Pi^1_1$-comprehension axiom of reverse mathematics, as shown by Montalb\'an. The implication must be strict for reasons of quantifier complexity, but it seems that no better…
Given a well-quasi-order $X$ and an ordinal $\alpha$, the set $s^F_\alpha(X)$ of transfinite sequences on $X$ with length less than $\alpha$ and with finite image is also a well-quasi-order, as proven by Nash-Williams. Before Nash-Williams…
In reverse mathematics, is is possible to have a curious situation where we know that an implication does not reverse, but appear to have no information on on how to weaken the assumption while preserving the conclusion. A main cause of…
We study Graver test sets for families of linear multi-stage stochastic integer programs with varying number of scenarios. We show that these test sets can be decomposed into finitely many ``building blocks'', independent of the number of…
Two applications of Nash-Williams' theory of barriers to sequences on Banach spaces are presented: The first one is the $c_0$-saturation of $C(K)$, $K$ countable compacta. The second one is the construction of weakly-null sequences…