2,949 research outputs found
On Second-Order Monadic Monoidal and Groupoidal Quantifiers
We study logics defined in terms of second-order monadic monoidal and
groupoidal quantifiers. These are generalized quantifiers defined by monoid and
groupoid word-problems, equivalently, by regular and context-free languages. We
give a computational classification of the expressive power of these logics
over strings with varying built-in predicates. In particular, we show that
ATIME(n) can be logically characterized in terms of second-order monadic
monoidal quantifiers
A decidable policy language for history-based transaction monitoring
Online trading invariably involves dealings between strangers, so it is
important for one party to be able to judge objectively the trustworthiness of
the other. In such a setting, the decision to trust a user may sensibly be
based on that user's past behaviour. We introduce a specification language
based on linear temporal logic for expressing a policy for categorising the
behaviour patterns of a user depending on its transaction history. We also
present an algorithm for checking whether the transaction history obeys the
stated policy. To be useful in a real setting, such a language should allow one
to express realistic policies which may involve parameter quantification and
quantitative or statistical patterns. We introduce several extensions of linear
temporal logic to cater for such needs: a restricted form of universal and
existential quantification; arbitrary computable functions and relations in the
term language; and a "counting" quantifier for counting how many times a
formula holds in the past. We then show that model checking a transaction
history against a policy, which we call the history-based transaction
monitoring problem, is PSPACE-complete in the size of the policy formula and
the length of the history. The problem becomes decidable in polynomial time
when the policies are fixed. We also consider the problem of transaction
monitoring in the case where not all the parameters of actions are observable.
We formulate two such "partial observability" monitoring problems, and show
their decidability under certain restrictions
Theories for TC0 and Other Small Complexity Classes
We present a general method for introducing finitely axiomatizable "minimal"
two-sorted theories for various subclasses of P (problems solvable in
polynomial time). The two sorts are natural numbers and finite sets of natural
numbers. The latter are essentially the finite binary strings, which provide a
natural domain for defining the functions and sets in small complexity classes.
We concentrate on the complexity class TC^0, whose problems are defined by
uniform polynomial-size families of bounded-depth Boolean circuits with
majority gates. We present an elegant theory VTC^0 in which the provably-total
functions are those associated with TC^0, and then prove that VTC^0 is
"isomorphic" to a different-looking single-sorted theory introduced by
Johannsen and Pollet. The most technical part of the isomorphism proof is
defining binary number multiplication in terms a bit-counting function, and
showing how to formalize the proofs of its algebraic properties.Comment: 40 pages, Logical Methods in Computer Scienc
Complexity of short Presburger arithmetic
We study complexity of short sentences in Presburger arithmetic (Short-PA).
Here by "short" we mean sentences with a bounded number of variables,
quantifiers, inequalities and Boolean operations; the input consists only of
the integers involved in the inequalities. We prove that assuming Kannan's
partition can be found in polynomial time, the satisfiability of Short-PA
sentences can be decided in polynomial time. Furthermore, under the same
assumption, we show that the numbers of satisfying assignments of short
Presburger sentences can also be computed in polynomial time
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