484 research outputs found
Proofs Without Syntax
"[M]athematicians care no more for logic than logicians for mathematics."
Augustus de Morgan, 1868.
Proofs are traditionally syntactic, inductively generated objects. This paper
presents an abstract mathematical formulation of propositional calculus
(propositional logic) in which proofs are combinatorial (graph-theoretic),
rather than syntactic. It defines a *combinatorial proof* of a proposition P as
a graph homomorphism h : C -> G(P), where G(P) is a graph associated with P and
C is a coloured graph. The main theorem is soundness and completeness: P is
true iff there exists a combinatorial proof h : C -> G(P).Comment: Appears in Annals of Mathematics, 2006. 5 pages + references. Version
1 is submitted version; v3 is final published version (in two-column format
rather than Annals style). Changes for v2: dualised definition of
combinatorial truth, thereby shortening some subsequent proofs; added
references; corrected typos; minor reworking of some sentences/paragraphs;
added comments on polynomial-time correctness (referee request). Changes for
v3: corrected two typos, reworded one sentence, repeated a citation in Notes
sectio
Circuit complexity, proof complexity, and polynomial identity testing
We introduce a new algebraic proof system, which has tight connections to
(algebraic) circuit complexity. In particular, we show that any
super-polynomial lower bound on any Boolean tautology in our proof system
implies that the permanent does not have polynomial-size algebraic circuits
(VNP is not equal to VP). As a corollary to the proof, we also show that
super-polynomial lower bounds on the number of lines in Polynomial Calculus
proofs (as opposed to the usual measure of number of monomials) imply the
Permanent versus Determinant Conjecture. Note that, prior to our work, there
was no proof system for which lower bounds on an arbitrary tautology implied
any computational lower bound.
Our proof system helps clarify the relationships between previous algebraic
proof systems, and begins to shed light on why proof complexity lower bounds
for various proof systems have been so much harder than lower bounds on the
corresponding circuit classes. In doing so, we highlight the importance of
polynomial identity testing (PIT) for understanding proof complexity.
More specifically, we introduce certain propositional axioms satisfied by any
Boolean circuit computing PIT. We use these PIT axioms to shed light on
AC^0[p]-Frege lower bounds, which have been open for nearly 30 years, with no
satisfactory explanation as to their apparent difficulty. We show that either:
a) Proving super-polynomial lower bounds on AC^0[p]-Frege implies VNP does not
have polynomial-size circuits of depth d - a notoriously open question for d at
least 4 - thus explaining the difficulty of lower bounds on AC^0[p]-Frege, or
b) AC^0[p]-Frege cannot efficiently prove the depth d PIT axioms, and hence we
have a lower bound on AC^0[p]-Frege.
Using the algebraic structure of our proof system, we propose a novel way to
extend techniques from algebraic circuit complexity to prove lower bounds in
proof complexity
Factor Varieties and Symbolic Computation
We propose an algebraization of classical and non-classical logics, based on factor varieties and decomposition operators. In particular, we provide a new method for determining whether a propositional formula is a tautology or a contradiction. This method can be autom-atized by defining a term rewriting system that enjoys confluence and strong normalization. This also suggests an original notion of logical gate and circuit, where propositional variables becomes logical gates and logical operations are implemented by substitution. Concerning formulas with quantifiers, we present a simple algorithm based on factor varieties for reducing first-order classical logic to equational logic. We achieve a completeness result for first-order classical logic without requiring any additional structure
A SAT+CAS Approach to Finding Good Matrices: New Examples and Counterexamples
We enumerate all circulant good matrices with odd orders divisible by 3 up to
order 70. As a consequence of this we find a previously overlooked set of good
matrices of order 27 and a new set of good matrices of order 57. We also find
that circulant good matrices do not exist in the orders 51, 63, and 69, thereby
finding three new counterexamples to the conjecture that such matrices exist in
all odd orders. Additionally, we prove a new relationship between the entries
of good matrices and exploit this relationship in our enumeration algorithm.
Our method applies the SAT+CAS paradigm of combining computer algebra
functionality with modern SAT solvers to efficiently search large spaces which
are specified by both algebraic and logical constraints
Discriminator logics (Research announcement)
A discriminator logic is the 1-assertional logic of a discriminator variety V having two constant terms 0 and 1 such that V ⊨ 0 1 iff every member of V is trivial. Examples of such logics abound in the literature. The main result of this research announcement asserts that a certain non-Fregean deductive system SBPC, which closely resembles the classical propositional calculus, is canonical for the class of discriminator logics in the sense that any discriminator logic S can be presented (up to definitional equivalence) as an axiomatic extension of SBPC by a set of extensional logical connectives taken from the language of S. The results outlined in this research announcement are extended to several generalisations of the class of discriminator logics in the main work
- …