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July 29, 2022
Relational Universal Algebra with String Diagrams
Posted by Emily Riehl
guest post by Phoebe Klett and Ralph Sarkis
This post continues the series from the Adjoint School of Applied Category Theory 2022. It is a summary of the main ideas introduced in this paper:
- Filippo Bonchi, Dusko Pavlovic and Pawel Sobocinski, Functorial Semantics for Relational Theories.
Just as category theory gives us a bird’s-eye view of all mathematical structures, universal algebra gives a bird’s-eye view of all algebraic structures (groups, rings, modules, etc.) While universal algebra leads to a beautiful theory with many general statements — it also enjoys a categorical formulation introduced in F.W. Lawvere’s thesis which inspired the aforementioned paper’s title — it does not deal with several common structures in mathematics like graphs, orders, categories and metric spaces. Relational universal algebra allows to cover these examples and more. In this post, we present this field of study using a diagrammatic syntax based on cartesian bicategories of relations.
July 28, 2022
Compositional Constructions of Automata
Posted by Emily Riehl
guest post by Ruben van Belle and Miguel Lopez
In this post we will detail a categorical construction of automata following the work of Albasini, Sabadini, and Walters. We first recall the basic definitions of various automata, and then outline the construction of the aformentioned authors as well as generalizations and examples.
A finite deterministic automaton consists of
a finite set (state space),
an initial state and a set of accepting states,
a finite set of input symbols and a transition map for every .
July 27, 2022
Learning to Lie with Sheaves
Posted by Emily Riehl
guest post by Sean O’Connor and Ana Luiza Tenorio
Social networks are frequently represented by graphs: each agent/person is a vertex and the interactions between pairs of individuals are the edges. A starting point to think about the evolution of opinions over time is to associate to each vertex a real number that represents the agreement of to respect a certain topic. For instance, fix the topic “category theory is cool”. In a social network of mathematicians, we will have some high positive representing a strong agreement with this assertion, some high negative for a strong disagreement, and some neutral opinions. Those mathematicians interact and may change their original opinion. What is the group’s opinion about category theory after a period of time? Clearly, eventually, everyone will agree that category theory is cool. Jokes (or not) aside, a standard way to try to answer this is to study the dynamical system generated by the heat equation
where and is the graph Laplacian, a matrix that represents a graph defined by the difference , with the degree matrix and the adjacency matrix of the graph. In this approach, originally proposed in Towards a mathematical theory of influence and attitude change, we study the evolution of opinion distributions without considering that expressed opinions may be different from personal opinions. In the paper Opinion Dynamics on Discourse Sheaves, Jakob Hansen and Robert Ghrist introduced a functor that addresses this distinction, and leads to a flexible model. We briefly present it here.
July 26, 2022
Identity Types in Context
Posted by Emily Riehl
guest post by Shreya Arya and Greta Coraglia
The relation between mathematicians and the notion of identity has been an interesting one. Even what is arguably the first mathematical text (that we know of) in history, Euclid’s Elements (c. 300 BC), deals with the problem of equality. In Book I, after Definitions and Postulates, Euclid details five Common Notions:
- Things equal to the same thing are also equal to one another.
- And if equal things are added to equal things then the wholes are equal.
- And if equal things are subtracted from equal things then the remainders are equal.
- And things coinciding with one another are equal to one another.
- And the whole [is] greater than the part.
On one hand, such notions are considered “common”, so that they are trivial enough that everyone ought to agree with them; on the other, they are not so trivial that one can avoid writing them down. Moreover, Euclid feels the need to pin-point the effect that equality must have on operations involving such objects: the underlying principle here is that two entities that are equal should share the same properties and behaviours.
What mathematicians really use is a bit stronger than that…1
July 25, 2022
How to Apply Category Theory to Thermodynamics
Posted by Emily Riehl
guest post by Nandan Kulkarni and Chad Harper
This blog post discusses the paper “Compositional Thermostatics” by John Baez, Owen Lynch, and Joe Moeller. The series of posts on Dr. Baez’s blog gives a more thorough overview of the topics in the paper, and is probably a better primer if you intend to read it. Like the posts on Dr. Baez’s blog, this blog post also explains some aspects of the framework in an introductory manner. However, it takes the approach of emphasizes particular interesting details, and concludes in the treatment of a particular quantum system using ideas from the paper.
July 19, 2022
Probability Monads as Codensity Monads
Posted by Tom Leinster
My PhD student Ruben Van Belle has just published his first paper!
Ruben Van Belle, Probability monads as codensity monads. Theory and Applications of Categories 38 (2022), 811–842.
It’s a treasure trove of theorems demonstrating how many of the monads loosely referred to as “probability monads” arise as codensity monads in a certain uniform manner, which I’ll tell you about now.
July 16, 2022
Conversations on Mathematics
Posted by John Baez
Now that I’ve retired, I have more time for pure math. So after a roughly decade-long break, James Dolan and I are talking about math again. Here are our conversations. Some are in email, but mainly these are our weekly 2-hour-long Zoom sessions, which I’ve put on YouTube. They focus on algebraic geometry — especially abelian varieties and motives — but also ‘doctrines’ and their applications to algebraic geometry, group representation theory, combinatorics and other subjects.
They may not be easy to follow, but maybe a few people will get something out of them. I have not corrected all the mistakes, some of which we eventually catch. I’ve added lots of links to papers and Wikipedia articles.
These conversations are continuing, but I won’t keep putting links to them here on -Category Café, so if you want more of them you can either check out my webpage at your leisure, or subscribe to my YouTube channel. I’ll probably fall behind in putting up videos, and then catch up, and then fall behind, etc. — so please don’t expect one to show up each week.
July 9, 2022
Symposium on Compositional Structures 9
Posted by John Baez
The Symposium on Compositional Structures is a nice informal conference series that happens more than once a year. You can now submit talks for this one:
• Ninth Symposium on Compositional Structures (SYCO 9), Como, Italy, 8-9 September 2022. Deadline to submit a talk: Monday August 1, 2022.
Apparently you can attend online but to give a talk you have to go there. Here are some details….