109,212 research outputs found
Philosophy of Computer Science: An Introductory Course
There are many branches of philosophy called “the philosophy of X,” where X = disciplines ranging from history to physics. The philosophy of artificial intelligence has a long history, and there are many courses and texts with that title. Surprisingly, the philosophy of computer science is not nearly as well-developed. This article proposes topics that might constitute the philosophy of computer science and describes a course covering those topics, along with suggested readings and assignments
Towards 3-Dimensional Rewriting Theory
String rewriting systems have proved very useful to study monoids. In good
cases, they give finite presentations of monoids, allowing computations on
those and their manipulation by a computer. Even better, when the presentation
is confluent and terminating, they provide one with a notion of canonical
representative of the elements of the presented monoid. Polygraphs are a
higher-dimensional generalization of this notion of presentation, from the
setting of monoids to the much more general setting of n-categories. One of the
main purposes of this article is to give a progressive introduction to the
notion of higher-dimensional rewriting system provided by polygraphs, and
describe its links with classical rewriting theory, string and term rewriting
systems in particular. After introducing the general setting, we will be
interested in proving local confluence for polygraphs presenting 2-categories
and introduce a framework in which a finite 3-dimensional rewriting system
admits a finite number of critical pairs
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1930 -- 2002): A Portrait of a Genius
We discuss the scientific contributions of Edsger Wybe Dijkstra, his opinions
and his legacy.Comment: 10 pages. To appear in Formal Aspects of Computin
Quantum Hamiltonian Complexity
Constraint satisfaction problems are a central pillar of modern computational
complexity theory. This survey provides an introduction to the rapidly growing
field of Quantum Hamiltonian Complexity, which includes the study of quantum
constraint satisfaction problems. Over the past decade and a half, this field
has witnessed fundamental breakthroughs, ranging from the establishment of a
"Quantum Cook-Levin Theorem" to deep insights into the structure of 1D
low-temperature quantum systems via so-called area laws. Our aim here is to
provide a computer science-oriented introduction to the subject in order to
help bridge the language barrier between computer scientists and physicists in
the field. As such, we include the following in this survey: (1) The
motivations and history of the field, (2) a glossary of condensed matter
physics terms explained in computer-science friendly language, (3) overviews of
central ideas from condensed matter physics, such as indistinguishable
particles, mean field theory, tensor networks, and area laws, and (4) brief
expositions of selected computer science-based results in the area. For
example, as part of the latter, we provide a novel information theoretic
presentation of Bravyi's polynomial time algorithm for Quantum 2-SAT.Comment: v4: published version, 127 pages, introduction expanded to include
brief introduction to quantum information, brief list of some recent
developments added, minor changes throughou
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