6 research outputs found
Random semicomputable reals revisited
The aim of this expository paper is to present a nice series of results,
obtained in the papers of Chaitin (1976), Solovay (1975), Calude et al. (1998),
Kucera and Slaman (2001). This joint effort led to a full characterization of
lower semicomputable random reals, both as those that can be expressed as a
"Chaitin Omega" and those that are maximal for the Solovay reducibility. The
original proofs were somewhat involved; in this paper, we present these results
in an elementary way, in particular requiring only basic knowledge of
algorithmic randomness. We add also several simple observations relating lower
semicomputable random reals and busy beaver functions.Comment: 15 page
Generic algorithms for halting problem and optimal machines revisited
The halting problem is undecidable --- but can it be solved for "most"
inputs? This natural question was considered in a number of papers, in
different settings. We revisit their results and show that most of them can be
easily proven in a natural framework of optimal machines (considered in
algorithmic information theory) using the notion of Kolmogorov complexity. We
also consider some related questions about this framework and about asymptotic
properties of the halting problem. In particular, we show that the fraction of
terminating programs cannot have a limit, and all limit points are Martin-L\"of
random reals. We then consider mass problems of finding an approximate solution
of halting problem and probabilistic algorithms for them, proving both positive
and negative results. We consider the fraction of terminating programs that
require a long time for termination, and describe this fraction using the busy
beaver function. We also consider approximate versions of separation problems,
and revisit Schnorr's results about optimal numberings showing how they can be
generalized.Comment: a preliminary version was presented at the ICALP 2015 conferenc