The Department of Mathematics at Johns Hopkins University solicits applications for one two-year postdoctoral fellowship beginning Summer 2021 (with some flexibility in the start and end dates). Th…
Tag: category theory
This thesis takes inspiration from quantum physics to investigate mathematical structure that lies at the interface of algebra and statistics. The starting point is a passage from classical probability theory to quantum probability theory. The quantum version of a probability distribution is a density operator, the quantum version of marginalizing is an operation called the partial trace, and the quantum version of a marginal probability distribution is a reduced density operator. Every joint probability distribution on a finite set can be modeled as a rank one density operator. By applying the partial trace, we obtain reduced density operators whose diagonals recover classical marginal probabilities. In general, these reduced densities will have rank higher than one, and their eigenvalues and eigenvectors will contain extra information that encodes subsystem interactions governed by statistics. We decode this information, and show it is akin to conditional probability, and then investigate the extent to which the eigenvectors capture "concepts" inherent in the original joint distribution. The theory is then illustrated with an experiment that exploits these ideas. Turning to a more theoretical application, we also discuss a preliminary framework for modeling entailment and concept hierarchy in natural language, namely, by representing expressions in the language as densities. Finally, initial inspiration for this thesis comes from formal concept analysis, which finds many striking parallels with the linear algebra. The parallels are not coincidental, and a common blueprint is found in category theory. We close with an exposition on free (co)completions and how the free-forgetful adjunctions in which they arise strongly suggest that in certain categorical contexts, the "fixed points" of a morphism with its adjoint encode interesting information.
Johns Hopkins University awards the 2020 President's Frontier Award during a surprise event on January 16, 2020 at the university's Homewood campus in Baltimore.
👓 Applied Category Theory Meeting at UCR | John Carlos Baez
The American Mathematical Society is having their Fall Western meeting here at U. C. Riverside during the weekend of November 9th and 10th, 2019. Joe Moeller and I are organizing a session on App…
📖 Read pages 21-28 of 528 of Abstract and Concrete Categories: The Joy of Cats by Jirí Adámek, Horst Herrlich, George E. Strecker
Read while having dinner at UCLA before class. Covered categories, examples, and duality.
📖 Read pages 48-55 of 486 of Category Theory for the Sciences by David I. Spivak
📖 Read pages i-8 of Category Theory for the Sciences by David I. Spivak
Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia
But it is easy to think we are in agreement, when we really are not. Modeling our thoughts on heuristics and graphics may be convenient for quick travel down the road, but we are liable to miss our turnoff at the first mile. The danger is in mistaking convenient conceptualizations for what is actually there.
A functor is like a conductor of mathematical truth.
The answer is that when we formalize our ideas, our understanding is clarified.
Creativity demands clarity of thinking, and to think clearly about a subject requires an organized understanding of how its pieces fit together. Organization and clarity also lead to better communication with others. Academics often say they are paid to think and understand, but that is not the whole truth. They are paid to think, understand, and communicate their findings.
👓 nPOV | nLab
Wikipedia enforces its entries to adopt an NPOV – a neutral point of view . This is appropriate for an encyclopedia.
However, the nLab is not Wikipedia, nor is it an encyclopedia, although it does aspire to provide a useful reference in many areas (among its other purposes). In particular, the nnLab has a particular point of view, which we may call the nnPOV or the n- categorical point of view .
🔖 Introduction to Category Theory | UCLA Continuing Education
This course is an introduction to the basic tenets of category theory, as formulated and illustrated through examples drawn from algebra, calculus, geometry, set theory, topology, number theory, and linear algebra.
Category theory, since its development in the 1940s, has assumed an increasingly center-stage role in formalizing mathematics and providing tools to diverse scientific disciplines, most notably computer science. A category is fundamentally a family of mathematical obejcts (e.g., numbers, vector spaces, groups, topological spaces) along with “mappings” (so-called morphisms) between these objects that, in some defined sense, preserve structure. Taking it one step further, one can consider morphisms (so-called functors) between categories. This course is an introduction to the basic tenets of category theory, as formulated and illustrated through examples drawn from algebra, calculus, geometry, set theory, topology, number theory, and linear algebra. Topics to be discussed include: isomorphism; products and coproducts; dual categories; covariant, contravariant, and adjoint functors; abelian and additive categories; and the Yoneda Lemma. The course should appeal to devotees of mathematical reasoning, computer scientists, and those wishing to gain basic insights into a hot area of mathematics.
January 8, 2019 - March 19, 2019
Tuesday 7:00PM - 10:00PM
Location: UCLA
Instructor: Michael Miller
Fee: $453.00
Oddly, it wasn’t listed in the published physical catalog, but it’s available online. I hope that those interested in mathematics will register as well as those who are interested in computer science.
Gems And Astonishments of Mathematics: Past and Present—Lecture One
Lecture notes
For those who may have missed last night’s first lecture, I’m linking to a Livescribe PDF document which includes the written notes as well as the accompanying audio from the lecture. If you view it in Acrobat Reader version X (or higher), you should be able to access the audio portion of the lecture and experience it in real time almost as if you had been present in person. (Instructions for using Livescribe PDF documents.)
We’ve covered the following topics:
- Class Introduction
- Erdős Discrepancy Problem
- n-cubes
- Hilbert’s Cube Lemma (1892)
- Schur (1916)
- Van der Waerden (1927)
- Sylvester’s Line Problem (partial coverage to be finished in the next lecture)
- Ramsey Theory
- Erdős (1943)
- Gallai (1944)
- Steinberg’s alternate (1944)
- DeBruijn and Erdős (1948)
- Motzkin (1951)
- Dirac (1951)
- Kelly & Moser (1958)
- Tao-Green Proof
- Homework 1 (homeworks are generally not graded)
Over the coming days and months, I’ll likely bookmark some related papers and research on these and other topics in the class using the class identifier MATHX451.44 as a tag in addition to topic specific tags.
Course Description
Mathematics has evolved over the centuries not only by building on the work of past generations, but also through unforeseen discoveries or conjectures that continue to tantalize, bewilder, and engage academics and the public alike. This course, the first in a two-quarter sequence, is a survey of about two dozen problems—some dating back 400 years, but all readily stated and understood—that either remain unsolved or have been settled in fairly recent times. Each of them, aside from presenting its own intrigue, has led to the development of novel mathematical approaches to problem solving. Topics to be discussed include (Google away!): Conway’s Look and Say Sequences, Kepler’s Conjecture, Szilassi’s Polyhedron, the ABC Conjecture, Benford’s Law, Hadamard’s Conjecture, Parrondo’s Paradox, and the Collatz Conjecture. The course should appeal to devotees of mathematical reasoning and those wishing to keep abreast of recent and continuing mathematical developments.
Suggested Prerequisites
Some exposure to advanced mathematical methods, particularly those pertaining to number theory and matrix theory. Most in the class are taking the course for “fun” and the enjoyment of learning, so there is a huge breadth of mathematical abilities represented–don’t not take the course because you feel you’ll get lost.
I’ve written some general thoughts, hints, and tips on these courses in the past.
Renovated Classrooms
I’d complained to the UCLA administration before about how dirty the windows were in the Math Sciences Building, but they went even further than I expected in fixing the problem. Not only did they clean the windows they put in new flooring, brand new modern chairs, wood paneling on the walls, new projection, and new white boards! I particularly love the new swivel chairs, and it’s nice to have such a lovely new environment in which to study math.
Category Theory for Winter 2019
As I mentioned the other day, Dr. Miller has also announced (and reiterated last night) that he’ll be teaching a course on the topic of Category Theory for the Winter quarter coming up. Thus if you’re interested in abstract mathematics or areas of computer programming that use it, start getting ready!
👓 What is Applied Category Theory? | Azimuth
Tai-Danae Bradley has a new free “booklet” on applied category theory. It was inspired by the workshop Applied Category Theory 2018, which she attended, and I think it makes a great com…
🔖 [1809.05923] What is Applied Category Theory? by Tai-Danae Bradley
This is a collection of introductory, expository notes on applied category theory, inspired by the 2018 Applied Category Theory Workshop, and in these notes we take a leisurely stroll through two themes (functorial semantics and compositionality), two constructions (monoidal categories and decorated cospans) and two examples (chemical reaction networks and natural language processing) within the field. [PDF]
Friends! I am so happy to share that my little booklet “What is Applied Category Theory?” is now available on the arXiv. It’s a collection of introductory, expository notes inspired by the ACT workshop that took place earlier this year. Enjoy! https://t.co/EPYP19z14x pic.twitter.com/O4uVhj401s
— Tai-Danae Bradley (@math3ma) September 18, 2018
See also Notes on Applied Category Theory
🔖 Temporal Type Theory: A topos-theoretic approach to systems and behavior | ArXiv
This book introduces a temporal type theory, the first of its kind as far as we know. It is based on a standard core, and as such it can be formalized in a proof assistant such as Coq or Lean by adding a number of axioms. Well-known temporal logics---such as Linear and Metric Temporal Logic (LTL and MTL)---embed within the logic of temporal type theory. The types in this theory represent "behavior types". The language is rich enough to allow one to define arbitrary hybrid dynamical systems, which are mixtures of continuous dynamics---e.g. as described by a differential equation---and discrete jumps. In particular, the derivative of a continuous real-valued function is internally defined. We construct a semantics for the temporal type theory in the topos of sheaves on a translation-invariant quotient of the standard interval domain. In fact, domain theory plays a recurring role in both the semantics and the type theory.
hat tip:
This morning at ACT2018, David Spivak gave a VERY cool talk on using topos theory to model how airplanes can maintain a safe distance from each other in flight. You can watch the talk here! https://t.co/pUXZhj6SXA Also check out “Temporal Type Theory” at https://t.co/6LWNOQWtqw pic.twitter.com/7x9yjBwVIA
— Tai-Danae Bradley (@math3ma) May 2, 2018