List of ZIC-talks (from 2002)

(back to ZIC-homepage)

2006

Henk Barendregt - Topics in Typed Lambda Calculus - 14 March 2006

2005

Tonny Hurkens - Phinary Numbers - 6 December 2005

Iris Loeb and Herman Geuvers (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen) - Natural deduction via graphs - 15 November 2005

Smile Markovski (Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Macedonia) - Applications of Quasigroup String Transformations in Cryptography and Coding Theory - 1 November 2005

Ronald Middelkoop - Cooperation-Based Invariants for OO Languages - 18 October 2005

Lionel Mamane - Surreal Numbers in Coq and Type Theory - 7 June 2005

Peter van Rossum - MathSAT - combining Boolean satisfiability solving and mathematical reasoning - 24 May 2005

J-J.Ch. Meyer - On the Semantics of (Multi) Agent Programming - 26 April 2005

Jan van Eijck - Logics for Epistemic Updating - 8 March 2005

Russell O'Connor - Incompleteness Proof in Coq - 8 February 2005

Erik Poll - The type system of Axiom - 11 January 2005

2004

Francien Dechesne - IF-logic from a game-theoretical perspective - 14 December 2004

Ana Sokolova - Weak bisimulation for action-type coalgebras - 30 November 2004

Georgi Jojgov - A stepwise approach to formalizing mathematics - 9 November 2004

Jan Hidders - Deciding static properties of XPath expressions - 5 October 2004

Suzana Andova - Equivalences for silent transitions in Probabilistic Systems - 29 June 2004

Clemens Grabmayer - Derivability and admissibility of inference rules in abstract Hilbert systems - 22 June 2004

Martijn Oostdijk - Tool support for developing JML specs - 8 June 2004

- Automath Symposium - 26 May 2004

Jesper Carlström (Stockholm, Nijmegen) - Interpreting descriptions in intensional type theory - 20 April 2004

Gilles Dowek (France) - Cut elimination for axiomatic theories - 6 April 2004

Luís Cruz-Filipe - Formalizing Constructive Mathematics in Type Theory - 16 March 2004

Jos Baeten - A Brief History of Process Algebra - 2 March 2004

Georgi Jojgov - A Calculus of Tactics and Its Operational Semantics - 3 February 2004

Peter Grünwald - Shannon information and Kolmogorov Complexity - 20 January 2004

2003

Patrik Eklund (Finland) - Partial orders make monads even more useful - 2 December 2003

Paul Harrenstein - Logic in equilibrium and equilibrium in logic - 25 November 2003

Suzana Andova - Discrete-time rewards model-checked - 4 November 2003

Bas Luttik - Unique Decomposition - 21 October 2003

Joop Niekus (UvA) - Individual Choice Sequences in the work of Brouwer - 17 June 2003

Ling Cheung (KUN) - Concise Graphs and Functional Bisimulations - 3 June 2003

Ana Sokolova (TU/e) and Falk Bartels (CWI) - A hierarchy of probabilistic system types - 20 May 2003

Bas Spitters (KUN) - Constructive and Computer mathematics - 6 May 2003

Maarten Marx (UvA) - Tableaux for Quantified Hybrid Logic - 8 April 2003

Barteld Kooi (RUG) - Probabilistic Dynamic Epistemic Logic - 11 March 2003

Mirna Bognar (Deloitte & Touche, previous affiliation: VU) - The context cube: the lambda cube with contexts - 25 February 2003

Vincent van Oostrom and Dimitri Hendriks (UU) - "adbmaL" - 11 February 2003

Pedro d'Argenio (Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Argentina) - Reachability Analysis of Probabilistic Systems by Successive Refinements - 28 January 2003

2002

Sandro Etalle (Twente University) - A constraint based system for the verification of security protocols - 10 december 2002

Marc Pauly (University of Liverpool) - Towards the Formal Verification of Social Mechanisms - 26 November 2002

Jesse Hughes (KUN) - The Coinductive Approach to Verifying Cryptographic Protocols - 12 November 2002

Jerry den Hartog - Smartcard security: Attacking the implementation. - 16 July 2002

Martijn Oostdijk (KUN) - Formal Verification of a Simple Java Card Payment Applet - 2 July 2002

Francien Dechesne - Logic and game theory: Hintikka's Independence Friendly Logic - 18 June 2002

Abstracts

Date:

14 March 2006

Title:

Topics in Typed Lambda Calculus

Speaker(s):

Henk Barendregt

Note: The ZIC colloquium started in september 1986, and this will be the 250th talk in this series! In the light of several developments, and because it is always good to end on a high note, we have decided to let this 250th talk be the final one. To say goodbye to the ZIC and to celebrate its succesful history, this last talk will be a special event.

Abstract:

After the untyped lambda calculus, the typed one seems to be quite restricted. This is not so. Having dependent types one can formalize mathematics, whereby statements become types and proofs terms. But already the much more modest type systems of simple, recursive and intersection types, the topics of a forthcoming book, provide interesting results. The talk will give examples of these.

The simple types are freely generated from atomic types by the operator -> for function space types. Many open problems have been settled except the one whether general pattern matching, $\exists X.FX=G$, is decidable.

In the recursive types one imposes (in)equalities between the freely generated ones. Non-decidable properties of terms like being strongly normalizable become characterizable by these types.

When intersections of two types are required to exist, then one can give type theoretic descriptions of well-known models of untyped lambda calculus. This happens via a general duality result between (finitary) meet semi-lattices and the much richer algebraic lattices.


Date:

6 December 2005

Title:

Phinary Numbers

Speaker(s):

Tonny Hurkens

 

Abstract:

The binary number system is based on the classical fact that e.g. the interval [0, 1] is the union of two intervals of size 1/2. Constructively this is not valid, but overlapping subintervals will do. If one takes as size the golden ration phi (given by phi + phi*phi = 1), then the size of the overlap is phi*phi*phi. This leads to the phi(nary) number system, see www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci. We also consider a variant with three subintervals of size phi*phi, which leads to a symmetric representation of integers.


Date:

15 November 2005

Title:

Natural deduction via graphs

Speaker(s):

Iris Loeb and Herman Geuvers (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)

 

Abstract:

We introduce the formalism of "deduction graphs" as a generalisation of both Gentzen-Prawitz style natural deduction and Fitch style flag deduction. The advantage of this formalism is that subproofs can be shared, like in flag deductions (and unlike natural deduction), but also that the linearisation used in flag deductions is avoided. Our deduction graphs have both "nodes" and "boxes", which are collections of nodes that also form a node themselves.

In the first hour we give a precise definition of deduction graphs and we give examples to illustrate them. We also show the connections with other natural deduction formalisms. Gentzen-Prawitz style natural deductions and Fitch style flag deductions can easily be embedded into the deduction graph formalism. A more interesting formalism is "proof nets" (the `natural deduction variant' of linear logic), which also has the notion of "box": we indicate how to translate deduction graphs to proof nets.

In the second hour we study the computational behaviour of deduction graphs by analysing the process of cut-elimination and by defining translations from deduction graphs to simply typed lambda terms. From a slight variation of this translation we conclude that the process of cut-elimination is strongly normalising. The translation to simple type theory removes quite a lot of structure and we therefore also propose a translation to a context calculus with lets, that faithfully captures the structure of deduction graphs. Finally, we look again into the translation to proof nets and we connect the process of cut-elimination on a deduction graph to cut-elimination on its translation.


Date:

1 November 2005

Title:

Applications of Quasigroup String Transformations in Cryptography and Coding Theory

Speaker(s):

Smile Markovski (Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Macedonia)

Note: Prof. Markovski will be our guest on the occasion of Ana Sokolova's PhD-defense on Thursday November 3.

Abstract:

Quasigroups are simple algebraic structures consisting of a set, Q, and a binary operation, *: Q2 Q. The pair (Q,*) is said to be a quasigroup if the equations

a * x = b and y * a = b

have unique solutions x and y for each a, b in Q. They are generalization of the groups as algebraic structures, and of the Latin squares as combinatorial structures, since the main body of the multiplication table of a finite quasigroup is a Latin square (every row and column contain different elements). These facts play an important role in the application of quasigroups.

Given a finite quasigroup (Q, *), |Q| < ∞, several permutations Qn Æ Qn can be defined, where n is a positive integer. The elements of Qn can be considered as words (messages) of length n in the alphabet Q. We use them for suitable definitions of encryption/decryption functions, one way functions, hash functions, stream ciphers, almost random codes, PRNG, for repairing of MD4, MD5, SHA, ¿ Several products are designed that way and some of them are used in industry or are under patent.

Keywords: quasigroup, cryptography, stream cipher, hash function, PRNG, random code


Date:

18 October 2005

Title:

Cooperation-Based Invariants for OO Languages

Speaker(s):

Ronald Middelkoop

 

Abstract:

A class invariant describes the consistent states of objects instantiated from that class. In general, such an invariant can relate the state of several objects. We introduce an approach that allows this for objects of mutually visible classes, in a way that supports modular verification. In particular, invariants expressing non-hierarchical object relations are supported.

To this end, dependencies are made explicit by cooperation. Furthermore, a method can specify explicitly that it does not depend on the validity of a certain invariant. Such a method can be called even when that invariant is violated. This allows a novel, flexible semantics of invariants that still captures their intuitive meaning.


Date:

7 June 2005

Title:

Surreal Numbers in Coq and Type Theory

Speaker(s):

Lionel Mamane

 

Abstract:

Surreal Numbers form a totally ordered (commutative) Field, containing copies of the reals and (all) the ordinals. The natural presentation of surreal numbers uses an induction-recursion scheme, which is not available in Coq. However, the original presentation by Conway explicitly works around needing induction-recursion, too. I have encoded most of the Ring structure of surreal numbers in Coq. This encoding relies on Aczel's encoding of set theory in type theory. The definition of the order, a direct inductive definition in Conway's presentation, needed to be separated into a mutually inductive definition of "at most" and "not at least" to satisfy Coq's positivity criterion. The recursion and induction schemes used in definitions and proofs turned out to be too subtle for Coq to accept straight away.

In this talk, I'll present surreal numbers and the encoding in Coq thereof I made during my Master's at the TU/e and refined during my PhD at the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen. I'll also say a few words about the situation with other theorem provers, mostly Agda.


Date:

24 May 2005

Title:

MathSAT - combining Boolean satisfiability solving and mathematical reasoning

Speaker(s):

Peter van Rossum

 

Abstract:

Recent improvements in propositional satisfiability techniques have made it possible to tackle some hard real-world problems (e.g., model checking of circuit designs, propositional planning) by encoding them into SAT. However, a purely Boolean representation is not expressive enough for certain real-world problems (e.g., verification of timed and hybrid systems) and for other problems translating into a purely Boolean formula is very inefficient (e.g., circuit designs that involve arithmetic).

At ITC-Irst in Trento, we developed MathSAT, a satisfiability checker that combines propositional satisfiability with real and integer arithmetic, allowing for a natural modelling of the above-mentionned problems. I will discuss the basic techniques for combining propositional and mathematical reasoning used in MathSAT.


Date:

26 April 2005

Title:

On the Semantics of (Multi) Agent Programming

Speaker(s):

J-J.Ch. Meyer

 

Abstract: Agent(-oriented) Programming is a programming paradigm in which one tries to realise intelligent systems using cognitive notions such as beliefs, goals, plans,... Agent-oriented programming languages have been devised to enable programming directly in terms of these cognitive notions. Furthermore, to program multi-agent systems concepts and techniques from concurrent and distributed programming are added, such as parallel execution, communication, coordination, ... In this talk I'll briefly discuss the ideas behind agents and agent programming more in general, after which I'll turn to some more detailed issues, and semantical ones in particular, centered around the language 3APL developed in Utrecht.


Date:

8 March 2005

Title:

Logics for Epistemic Updating

Speaker(s):

Jan van Eijck

 

Abstract:

Epistemic updating is the process of changing multi-agent epistemic situations (multi-agent Kripke models) by means of informative communicative acts, such as public announcements, group messages, private messages, and so on.

We propose to use an epistemic version of propositional dynamic logic (PDL) for this. First we sketch how epistemic PDL can be used to model epistemic situations, including the description of what is common knowledge among groups of agents. Next, we show how epistemic update PDL (PDL with update actions) can be translated to epistemic PDL. This translation yields a sound and complete proof system for epistemic update PDL, and it can be used to find appropriate axioms for special cases of updates.

We end with a brief demonstration of DEMO, a tool for Dynamic Epistemic Modelling (modelling epistemic updates, graphical display of update results, graphical display of action models, formula evaluation in epistemic models, translation of epistemic update formulas to epistemic PDL formulas, and so on).

References: http://www.win.tue.nl/zic/doc/JvEijck.bib


Date:

8 February 2005

Title:

Incompleteness Proof in Coq

Speaker(s):

Russell O'Connor

 

Abstract:

In this talk I will present my formalization of the Goedel-Rosser Incompleteness Theorem in Coq. I will discuss the approach taken, and how it differs from the previous formalization of the Incompleteness theorem.

I will also discuss my experiences using Coq and the difficulties I encountered when learning to use the proof system.

The audience should be familiar with dependent type theory and inductive data structures. It would be useful to know a bit about Coq, or at least how dependent type theory is used to represent proofs.


Date:

11 January 2005

Title:

The type system of Axiom

Speaker(s):

Erik Poll

Note: joint work with Simon Thompson at the University of Kent at Canterbury

Abstract: The computer algebra system Axiom is unusual among computer algebra systems because it is strongly typed. I'll discuss the type system of Aldor, which is the programming language of Axiom, and discuss how this might be used to combine computer algebra and theorem proving by exploiting the Curry-Howard-de Bruijn isomorphism.


Date:

14 December 2004

Title:

IF-logic from a game-theoretical perspective

Speaker(s):

Francien Dechesne

 

Abstract:

Game Theoretical Semantics is an alternative to Tarski semantics on first order predicate logic, that adapts easily to extensions of first order logic. A notable example is Hintikka's "Independence Friendly Logic", IF-logic for short, which allows for more general dependence patterns between quantifiers. These patterns can be interpreted by switching from games of perfect information to games of imperfect information in the semantics.

In this talk, I will show some connections between results and concepts from the theory of games of imperfect information, and logical properties of IF-logic. In particular, I show how logical equivalence schemes in IF-logic can be seen to correspond to the so-called Thompson transformations on games of imperfect information. We also see the evaluation of some surprising and debated IF-formulas in the light of the game theoretic concept of "imperfect recall", the interpretation of which is a topic of debate in game theory.

These examples give us some appealing correspondences between IF-logic and game theory, but I will argue that they also reveil that the class of IF-semantic games is game-theoretically rather unnatural.


Date:

30 November 2004

Title:

Weak bisimulation for action-type coalgebras

Speaker(s):

Ana Sokolova

Note: joint work with Erik de Vink and Harald Woracek

Abstract: We propose a coalgebraic definition of weak bisimulation for a class of coalgebras obtained from bifunctors over the category SET. Weak bisimilarity for a system is obtained as strong bisimilarity of a transformed system. The transformation consists of two steps: First, the behaviour on actions is expanded to behaviour on finite words. Second, the behaviour on finite words is taken modulo the hiding of invisible actions, yielding behaviour on equivalence classes of words closed under silent steps. The coalgebraic definition is justified by two correspondence results, one for the classical notion of weak bisimulation of Milner and another for the notion of weak bisimulation for generative probabilistic transition systems as advocated by Baier and Hermanns.


Date:

9 November 2004

Title:

A stepwise approach to formalizing mathematics

Speaker(s):

Georgi Jojgov

Note: Please note that the ZIC will be in a DIFFERENT ROOM than usual.

Abstract: In this talk I present ongoing work on studying the process of creating a fully formalized and computer-checked document from a piece of informal mathematics. Our approach, based on Weak Type Theory (WTT), allows the definition of several stages of this process, each with increasingly stronger correctness requirements. Every one of these stages presents opportunities for computer assistance and checks that help the developer of the formal text and guarantees higher level of reliability of the formalization as a whole. I will discuss both the general setting and goals of the project as well as some recent ongoing work on the automatic translation of a segment of WTT into type theory with open terms.


Date:

5 October 2004

Title:

Deciding static properties of XPath expressions

Speaker(s):

Jan Hidders

 

Abstract:

In the first part of this talk we discuss the problem of finding a sound and complete rule set for determining whether sorting and duplicate removal operations in the query plan of XPath expressions are unnecessary. Additionally we define a deterministic infinite automaton that illustrates how these rules can be translated into an efficient algorithm. This work is an important first step in the understanding and tackling of XPath/XQuery optimization problems that are related to ordering and duplicate removal.

In the second part of this talk we investigate the complexity of deciding the satisfiability of XPath 2.0 expressions, i.e., whether there is an XML document for which their result is nonempty. Several fragments that allow certain types of expressions are classified as either in PTIME or NP-hard to see which type of expression make this a hard problem. Finally, we establish a link between XPath expressions and partial tree descriptions which are studied in computational linguistics.


Date:

29 June 2004

Title:

Equivalences for silent transitions in Probabilistic Systems

Speaker(s):

Suzana Andova

 

Abstract: We address abstraction in the setting of probabilistic reactive systems, and study its formal underpinnings for the strictly alternating model. In particular, we define the notion of branching bisimilarity and study its properties by studying two other equivalence relations, viz.\ coloured trace equivalence and branching bisimilarity using maximal probabilities. We show that both alternatives coincide with branching bisimilarity. The alternative characterisations have their own merits and focus on different aspects of branching bisimilarity. Together they give a better understanding of branching bisimilarity. Furthermore, we show that the notions of branching bisimilarity in the alternating and in the non-alternating model differ, and that the latter one discriminates between systems that are intuitively branching bisimilar.


Date:

22 June 2004

Title:

Derivability and admissibility of inference rules in abstract Hilbert systems

Speaker(s):

Clemens Grabmayer

 

Abstract:

In this talk I will broadly follow a recent report with the same title. The aim there was to collect general results about the notions of derivability and admissibility that apply to all Hilbert-style proof systems ``of simplest kind''.

For this purpose, a general framework for Hilbert systems is introduced in which it is abstracted from the syntax of formulas and the operational content of rules. In these ``abstract Hilbert systems'' (AHS's) a rule is a set of inference steps that is endowed with a premise and a conclusion function. Subsequently the notions of rule derivability and admissibility are adapted to AHS's, two variants of rule derivability are proposed, and the relationships of these four notions towards each other are investigated.

In a further step, relations are considered that compare AHS's with respect to rule admissibility, a notion of rule derivability, or a particular consequence relation. A theorem is given that captures the relationships towards each other of 24 such relations. And eventually, the question is explored of what consequences the property of a rule R to be derivable or admissible in an AHS S does entail for the possibility to eliminate applications of R from derivations in the extension of S by adding R.

Links:
the mentioned report: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~clemens/dairahs.ps
a 7-page overview: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~clemens/collegiumlogicum.pdf


Date:

8 June 2004

Title:

Tool support for developing JML specs

Speaker(s):

Martijn Oostdijk

Note: Please note that the ZIC will be in a DIFFERENT ROOM than usual.

Abstract:

The specification language JML (www.jmlspecs.org) is becoming the de facto standard for writing specifications for Java programs. JML is easy to use for Java programmers since its syntax stays close to Java. Moreover, JML is supported by many tools, which help to check a specification with respect to an implementation.

In the past, we've applied JML to many Java and Java Card case studies. One of the lessons we learned is that coming up with good JML specifications is often the hardest part of verifying a given implementation.

This talk gives a short overview of JML and its application to Java Card. Some of the existing tools are discussed, as well as current work on tools that should make life easier for people developing JML specifications.


Date:

26 May 2004

Title:

Automath Symposium

Speaker(s):

 

 

Abstract:

A joint symposium with the seminar of the Foundations Group in Nijmegen and the ZIC Colloquium on the occasion of the digitalization of the Automath Archive


Date:

20 April 2004

Title:

Interpreting descriptions in intensional type theory

Speaker(s):

Jesper Carlström (Stockholm, Nijmegen)

 

Abstract:

We give calculi for intuitionistic first order logic with indefinite and definite descriptions (choice-operators for full choice and unique choice, respectively) and interpret these calculi in Martin-Löf's intensional type theory. A substantial part of mathematics can be naturally expressed in first order logic with descriptions; and hence it can be understood intensionally via the interpretation.


Date:

6 April 2004

Title:

Cut elimination for axiomatic theories

Speaker(s):

Gilles Dowek (France)

 

Abstract:

Gentzen cut elimination theorem for predicate logic is a central result in proof theory allowing to prove the consistency of deduction, independence results, the disjunction and the witness property for constructive proofs, the completeness of proof search methods, decidability of fragments, ...

However, most of these results cannot be derived from the cut elimination theorem anymore when we consider deduction in an axiomatic theory, and some extensions of the cut elimination theorem are needed to obtain similar results for theories such as arithmetic and type theory.

In this seminar, I will present recent work towards a notion of cut elimination for axiomatic theories. The main interest of these developments is that they challenge the notion of axiomatic theory and show the way to the more computational oriented notion of theory.


Date:

16 March 2004

Title:

Formalizing Constructive Mathematics in Type Theory

Speaker(s):

Luís Cruz-Filipe

 

Abstract:

In this talk I will present C-CoRN, the Constructive Coq Repository at Nijmegen. As its name suggests, C-CoRN is a library of formalized constructive mathematics developed in the theorem prover Coq. In what way and for what purposes such a library can be developed and used will be the main topics of the presentation.

One of the basic definitions in C-CoRN is that of partial function. will discuss and compare several different ways in which partial functions can be represented both in Coq and in other type theories. As an example of the use of this definition, I will show how the usual functions of analysis (sine, exponential, logarithm) can be defined and used.

Another aspect of C-CoRN is automation of proofs. I will explain how equational reasoning can be done without user intervention and show how this hugely simplifies proofs.

Finally, I will pursue the possible applications of C-CoRN with an overview of program extraction and how, in theory, the formalization of the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra could be used to obtain a root-finding program. Unfortunately, as will be seen, the theory and the practice do not coincide.


Date:

2 March 2004

Title:

A Brief History of Process Algebra

Speaker(s):

Jos Baeten

 

Abstract:

This talk addresses the history of process algebra as an area of research in concurrency theory, the theory of parallel and distributed systems in computer science. Origins are traced back to the early seventies of the twentieth century, and developments since that time are sketched. The speaker gives his personal views on these matters. He also considers the present situation, and states some challenges for the future.


Date:

3 February 2004

Title:

A Calculus of Tactics and Its Operational Semantics

Speaker(s):

Georgi Jojgov

 

Abstract:

In interactive theorem proving one uses a computer program called 'proof assistant' to create proofs and develop theories. The proof assistant does the bookkeeping and automates certain tasks and the human provides guidance. The commands for creating proofs provided by the proof assistant are usually called 'tactics'. In this talk we will discuss a calculus that is capable of describing some common tactics in theorem provers based on type theory. The calculus is an extension of a calculus of open terms with proof-search primitives as unification constraints, recursion, exception handling, etc. We will present typed operational semantics for the calculus and show some of its properties.


Date:

20 January 2004

Title:

Shannon information and Kolmogorov Complexity

Speaker(s):

Peter Grünwald

Note: The article of Peter Grünwald and Paul Vitányi, on the subject of Shannon information and Kolmogorov Complexity (Journal of Logic, Language and Information (12), pp.497-529, 2003), is available at Peter's publication webpage.

Abstract:

We introduce, compare and contrast the theories of Shannon information and Kolmogorov complexity. Roughly speaking, the former measures information relative to random variables, defined relative to some known probability distribution. The latter measures information in individual objects (sequences of symbols or numbers), and makes no probabilistic assumptions. We investigate the extent to which these theories have a common purpose and where they are fundamentally different. We discuss the fundamental relations `entropy = expected Kolmogorov complexity' and `Shannon mutual information = expected algorithmic information'. We show how `universal coding/modeling' (a central idea in practical data compression) may be viewed as a middle-ground between the two theories, and how it leads to the 'minimum description length principle', a practically useable theory for statistical inference with arbitarily complex models.


Date:

2 December 2003

Title:

Partial orders make monads even more useful

Speaker(s):

Patrik Eklund (Finland)

Note: presentation (pdf)

Abstract:

Composing various powerset functors with the term monad gives rise to the concept of generalised terms. The goal is to extend traditional term unification with unification involving powersets of terms. This enables a study of substitutions and unifiers within Kleisli categories related to particular monads.

As constructions of monads involve complicated calculations with natural transformations, proofs are supported by a graphical approach that provides a useful tool for handling various conditions, such as those for distributive laws.

Monads equipped with order structures extends suitably to so called partially ordered monads. We will show how these partially ordered monads, together with their subconstructions, contribute to providing a generalised notion of powerset Kleene algebras. This generalisation builds upon more general powerset functor setting far beyond just strings (Kleene, 1956) and relations (Tarski, 1941).


Date:

25 November 2003

Title:

Logic in equilibrium and equilibrium in logic

Speaker(s):

Paul Harrenstein

 

Abstract:

Von Neumann and Morgenstern presented game-theory as a branch of mathematics that deals with problems that had nowhere been dealt with before. From a mathematical point of view, the participants in a situation of conflict can be seen as each trying to maximize the same function (the outcome of the game) according to an idiosyncratic principle (their preferences). Moreover, none of the players have control over all variables of the function. The also argued that the usual notion of optimality is no longer available and new solution concepts had to be developed to take its place. Most notably among these game-theoretical solution concepts is still that of a Nash-equilibirum.

In this presentation we explore two different ways in which the notion of Nash-equilibrium can be approached from a logical angle.

First, we propose a multi-modal propositional logic, which is is designed to describe and reason about games in extensive form. The concept of a (subgame perfect) Nash equilibrium| can be characterized by a formula scheme. We also present a completeness result for this logic.

Logical notions of consequence have frequently been related to game-theoretical solution concepts. The correspondence between a formula being classically valid and the existence of a winning strategy for a player in a related two-person game, has been most prominent in this context. In the second part of this talk, however, we propose a conservative extension of the classical notion of consequence for propositional logic based on a generalization of Nash-equilibrium. We construe propositional variables as decision variables that are possibly in the control of various agents and pursue the logical consequences of this idea. The game-theoretical concept of consequence that results opens up a line of theoretical research in which logic, game theory and social choice theory interact at the same level.


Date:

4 November 2003

Title:

Discrete-time rewards model-checked

Speaker(s):

Suzana Andova

 

Abstract:

A model-checking approach for analyzing discrete-time Markov reward models is presented. For this purpose, the temporal logic probabilistic CTL is extended with reward constraints.

This allows to formulate complex measures - involving expected as well as accumulated rewards - in a precise and succinct way. Algorithms to efficiently analyze such formulae are introduced. The approach is illustrated by model-checking a probabilistic cost model of the IPv4 zeroconf protocol for distributed address assignment in ad-hoc networks.


Date:

21 October 2003

Title:

Unique Decomposition

Speaker(s):

Bas Luttik

 

Abstract:

An element of a commutative monoid is indecomposable if it is not the composition of two elements that are both not the identity element of the monoid. A commutative monoid has unique decomposition if every element can be uniquely expressed as the composition of indecomposable elements. The best known example of a commutative monoid with unique decomposition is the set of positive natural numbers with multiplication as composition (and the prime numbers as indecomposable elements).

We introduce the notion of decomposition order for arbitrary commutative monoids. Our main result is that a commutative monoid has unique decomposition if, and only if, it can be equipped with a decomposition order.

We shall indicate how our result can be used to establish unique decomposition for 1. the commutative monoid of natural numbers with addition; 2. the commutative monoid of positive natural numbers with multiplication; and 3. the commutative monoid of weakly normed ACP_epsilon expressions with parallel composition (assuming handshaking communication).

If time permits we shall also indicate how our result can be generalised to partial commutative monoids (i.e., in which composition is a partial operation) so that it applies to (the partial commutative monoids associated with) well-founded Commutative Residual Algebras.

Joint work with Vincent van Oostrom (UU).


Date:

17 June 2003

Title:

Individual Choice Sequences in the work of Brouwer

Speaker(s):

Joop Niekus (UvA)

 

Abstract:

Choice sequences are sequences not completely determined by a law. We state that the introduction of particular choice sequences by Brouwer in the late twenties was not recognised as such. We claim that their later use in the method of the creative subject was not traced back to this original use of them and has been misinterpreted. We show where these particular choice sequences appear in the work of Brouwer and we show how they should be handled.


Date:

3 June 2003

Title:

Concise Graphs and Functional Bisimulations

Speaker(s):

Ling Cheung (KUN)

 

Abstract:

It is well-known that bisimilarity between two processes P and Q can be characterized by the existence of another process R and functional bisimulations from R to P and from R to Q. In fact, any bisimulation relation R between P and Q can be made into a process in such a way that the projections are functional bisimulations.

Our work is largely motivated by the following question: when does there exist a smallest such process R? In particular, if one adopts the approach of "bisimulations as processes", how can one guarantee the existence of least bisimulations (under set inclusion)?

In this talk, we introduce concise process graphs and prove existence of the least bisimulation between a concise graph and any other bisimilar graph. This definition has many consequences, among which existence of binary products and coproducts in the category P of process graphs and functional bisimulations. Moreover, the subcategory CP of concise graphs is coreflective in P.

We close by asking: "Is conciseness useful in any way?" and "How can conciseness be adapted to a setting with silent steps?"


Date:

20 May 2003

Title:

A hierarchy of probabilistic system types

Speaker(s):

Ana Sokolova (TU/e) and Falk Bartels (CWI)

Note: (Joint work with Erik de Vink (TU/e))

Abstract:

Many approaches in standard concurrency theory are commonly based on labelled transition systems or some minor variant thereof. When probabilities are introduced however, many different system types emerge: some authors for instance consider fully probabilistic systems, while others use systems which incorporate both, nondeterministic and probabilistic choice. In the latter case, various restrictions are furthermore imposed about when or in which order nondeterministic and probabilistic steps are allowed and which of them are associated with input or output labels.

We survey the different probabilistic models in use and arrange them in an expressiveness hierarchy. To this end a coalgebraic presentation turns out to be appropriate not only to describe the various systems with their associated notion of bisimilarity, but also to define translations of one type into another. Moreover, we present a simple sufficient criterion for such a translation to preserve expressiveness.


Date:

6 May 2003

Title:

Constructive and Computer mathematics

Speaker(s):

Bas Spitters (KUN)

 

Abstract:

In this talk I will highlight two views on constructive mathematics: 1) as an abstract theory of computation and 2) as an abstract programming language.

1. Constructive logic can be seen to be the "internal" logic for several models of computations. For instance, Turing machines models or so-called type-2 Turing machines models. I will illustrate the two approaches by looking at computations on the real numbers.

2. Constructive mathematics can be formalized in type theory and as such it is a very abstract programming language. This formalization can be done with the aid of a computer. I will give a short description of the formalization of a part of constructive mathematics in the Coq proof assistent by the Foundations group in Nijmegen. Finally, I will say a few words about experiments with the extraction of useful programs from such formalizations.


Date:

8 April 2003

Title:

Tableaux for Quantified Hybrid Logic

Speaker(s):

Maarten Marx (UvA)

Note: Full paper (pdf) with Patrick Blackburn (INRIA) slides (ps)

Abstract:

We present a (sound and complete) tableau calculus for Quantified Hybrid Logic (QHL). QHL is an extension of orthodox quantified modal logic: as well as the usual Box- and Diamond modalities it contains names for (and variables over) states, operators @_s for asserting that a formula holds at a named state, and a binder $\downarrow$ that binds a variable to the current state. The first-order component contains equality and rigid and non-rigid designators. As far as we are aware, ours is the first tableau system for QHL.

Completeness is established via a variant of the standard translation to first-order logic. More concretely, a valid QHL-sentence is translated into a valid first-order sentence in the correspondence language. As it is valid, there exists a first-order tableau proof for it. This tableau proof is then converted into a QHL-tableau proof for the original sentence. In this way we recycle a well-known result (completeness of first-order logic) instead of a well-known proof.

The tableau calculus is highly flexible. We only present it for the constant domain semantics, but slight changes render it complete for varying, expanding or contracting domains. Moreover, completeness with respect to specific frame classes can be obtained simply by adding extra rules or axioms (this can be done for every first-order definable class of frames which is closed under and reflects generated subframes).


Date:

11 March 2003

Title:

Probabilistic Dynamic Epistemic Logic

Speaker(s):

Barteld Kooi (RUG)

 

Abstract:

My talk is about probabilistic dynamic epistemic logic, a logic for reasoning about probability, information, and information change. Epistemic logic is a modal logic used to reason about information. This may also contain information about the information of other agents, because epistemic logic is suited to deal with situations involving more than one agent. In this way epistemic logic also deals with higher order information, i.e. information about information.

Although epistemic logic provides good means of analysis of higher order information, it does not involve information change. Dynamic epistemic logics are extensions of epistemic logic that can deal with information change. It is interesting to note that both in dynamic epistemic logic and in probability theory incorporating new information is studied. In probability theory this is done by taking conditional probabilities, also known as Bayesian updating. The crucial difference between the two approaches is due to a difference in perspective on information change: in dynamic epistemic logic learning that something is the case can change the truth value of some propositions. In probability theory this is assumed not to be the case. This difference in perspective becomes apparent when you are interested in higher order information. The question that pops up is what these two fields could learn from each other with respect to information change. I think that probability theory could greatly benefit from the theory of information change provided by dynamic epistemic logic.

In my talk I present a probabilistic dynamic epistemic logic that provides a novel approach to probabilistic updating, because it does take higher order information into account.


Date:

25 February 2003

Title:

The context cube: the lambda cube with contexts

Speaker(s):

Mirna Bognar (Deloitte & Touche, previous affiliation: VU)

 

Abstract:

We present the context cube $\lambda []$, a system of eight context calculi corresponding to Barendregt's lambda cube with contexts. In the context cube, the expressions and meta-contexts of the lambda cube can be represented. Moreover, filling of the holes of a context is a rewrite relation.

The novelty of the context cube is that it also deals with contexts with dependent types. The simplicity of the context cube lies in the fact that it can be translated into the lambda cube. Rewriting in the context cube is confluent and strongly normalising.

Furthermore, we illustrate how a mathematical structure can be representated as a context within the context cube, in such a way that it can be used, for example, in proofs. Our representations are basically de Bruijn's segments, but with holes in types to obtain a uniform representation.


Date:

11 February 2003

Title:

"adbmaL"

Speaker(s):

Vincent van Oostrom and Dimitri Hendriks (UU)

 

Abstract:

AdbmaL (pdf)

Slides available at http://www.phil.uu.nl/~oostrom/publication/rewriting.html.


Date:

28 January 2003

Title:

Reachability Analysis of Probabilistic Systems by Successive Refinements

Speaker(s):

Pedro d'Argenio (Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Argentina)

 

Abstract:

The last few years witnessed a continuosly growing interest in Quantitative Model Checking, that is, model checking in which the truth of a property is quantified by a probabilistic value. This talk will focus on a novel development to model check quantitative reachability properties on Markov decision processes together with its prototype implementation. The innovation of the technique is that the analysis is performed on an abstraction of the model under analysis. Such an abstraction is significantly smaller than the original model and may safely refute or accept the required property. Otherwise, the abstraction is refined and the process repeated. As the numerical analysis necessary to determine the validity of the property on the concrete Markov decision processes is more costly than the refinement process, the technique profits from applying such numerical analysis on smaller state spaces.


Date:

10 december 2002

Title:

A constraint based system for the verification of security protocols

Speaker(s):

Sandro Etalle (Twente University)

 

Abstract:

In [1] we propose a constraint-based system for the verification of security protocols. Our system is an improvement on that of Millen and Shmatikov and features (1) a new semantics, that lead to a significantly more efficient implementation, (2) a monotonic behavior, which also allows to detect flaws associated to partial runs and (3) a more expressive syntax, in which a principal may also perform explicit checks. In this paper we also show why these improvements yield a more effective and practical system.

This talk is meant as a (smooth) introduction to the system of [1] and to the use of constraint-solving for the verification of security protocols.

[1] R. Corin and S. Etalle. An Improved Constraint-Based System for the Verification of Security Protocols. Proc. 2002 Static Analysis Symposium. Springer-Verlag, LNCS, 2002. To appear.


Date:

26 November 2002

Title:

Towards the Formal Verification of Social Mechanisms

Speaker(s):

Marc Pauly (University of Liverpool)

 

Abstract:

Game theory and logic can provide the tools for a more formal analysis of the social mechanisms we are involved in, such as voting procedures, auctions, and negotiation. After spending some time to motivate this research program in general, I will focus on a particular technical example, an extension of the WHILE-language for programming game-theoretic mechanisms involving multiple agents. A structured operational semantics is provided in terms of extensive games of almost perfect information. Hoare-style partial correctness assertions are proposed to reason about the correctness of these mechanisms, where correctness is interpreted as the existence of a subgame perfect equilibrium. Using an extensional approach to pre- and postconditions, we show that an extension of Hoare's original calculus is sound and complete for reasoning about subgame perfect equilibria in game-theoretic mechanisms.


Date:

12 November 2002

Title:

The Coinductive Approach to Verifying Cryptographic Protocols

Speaker(s):

Jesse Hughes (KUN)

 

Abstract:

We look at a new way of specifying and verifying cryptographic protocols using the Coalgebraic Class Specification Language (CCSL). Our approach starts by providing a CCSL specification which models a cryptographic protocol (and inherits from a more abstract class specification). We include with the specification the correctness conditions to be proved (representing, typically, secrecy and authentication). This specification is compiled into a number of PVS theories. The correctness theorems are then proven within PVS, using a temporal logic derived from the coalgebraic specification of the protocol. We will conclude with a comparison with other approaches for analyzing cryptographic protocols. The main distinguishing feature of our approach is that it takes coalgebraic theory as its foundation.


Date:

16 July 2002

Title:

Smartcard security: Attacking the implementation.

Speaker(s):

Jerry den Hartog

 

Abstract:

The security properties of cryptographic algorithms run on smartcards are usually well understood. The implementation of the algorithm on a smartcard, however, may provide an attacker with additional information which is assumed to remain secret in the analysis of the security of the algorithm. Simply measuring the amount of power used by the smartcard during execution, for example, can provide information about the data that is being manipulated. This presentation discusses a tool that is being developed to analyze the risk of power analysis attack and other so called side channel attacks on the implementation of cryptographic algorithms on a smart card. The tool is illustrated by simulating a power analysis attack on a simple enciphering algorithm.


Date:

2 July 2002

Title:

Formal Verification of a Simple Java Card Payment Applet

Speaker(s):

Martijn Oostdijk (KUN)

 

Abstract:

In this talk we discuss some recent work on the formal verification of smart card payment implementations. We present an extremely simple Java Card applet whose specification can be formulated as "the Applet's balance field can only be decreased, never increased". We demonstrate how the implementation can be formally shown to be correct using the specification language JML and the Loop tool. We then extend this applet with a challenge-response mechanism which allows trusted terminals to increase the balance. This complicates things. However, some very useful properties of the extended applet can still be specified in JML and formally checked. Joint work with B. Jacobs and M. Warnier.


Date:

18 June 2002

Title:

Logic and game theory: Hintikka's Independence Friendly Logic

Speaker(s):

Francien Dechesne

 

Abstract:

My talk will start with an overview of Independence Friendly logic (IF-logic) as introduced by Hintikka in his book `The Principles of Mathematics Revisited' (1996). The syntax for IF-logic is an extension of the formalism for classical first order predicate logic. By a slash notation, we can make a quantifier or connective independent of a quantifier in whose scope it occurs. An IF-sentence gets its interpretation from Game Theoretical Semantics (GTS): truth and falsity of a sentence in a given model are defined in terms of the existence of winning strategies for the players in the associated 2-player semantical game. On first order sentences, Tarskian semantics and GTS coincide. The slash notation results in semantical games of imperfect information, which are in general not determined. Central in GTS is the notion of strategy. In the tradition of the theory of branching quantification (Henkin, 1960's), Hintikka formulates the existence of winning strategies in terms of Skolem functions. I will show how the semantical games can be formalized in a standard game theoretical framework. It shows that Skolem functions yield a significant restriction of the standard game theoretical notion of strategy.