Complexity Bounds for Ordinal-Based Termination

`What more than its truth do we know if we have a proof of a theorem in a given formal system?' We examine Kreisel's question in the particular context of program termination proofs, with an eye to deriving complexity bounds on program running times. Our main tool for this are length function theorems, which provide complexity bounds on the use of well quasi orders. We illustrate how to prove such theorems in the simple yet until now untreated case of ordinals. We show how to apply this new theorem to derive complexity bounds on programs when they are proven to terminate thanks to a ranking function into some ordinal.Comment: Invited talk at the 8th International Workshop on Reachability Problems (RP 2014, 22-24 September 2014, Oxford

A formally verified abstract account of Gödel's incompleteness theorems

We present an abstract development of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, performed with the help of the Isabelle/HOL theorem prover. We analyze sufficient conditions for the theorems’ applicability to a partially specified logic. In addition to the usual benefits of generality, our abstract perspective enables a comparison between alternative approaches from the literature. These include Rosser’s variation of the first theorem, Jeroslow’s variation of the second theorem, and the S ́wierczkowski–Paulson semantics-based approach. As part of our framework’s validation, we upgrade Paulson’s Isabelle proof to produce a mech- anization of the second theorem that does not assume soundness in the standard model, and in fact does not rely on any notion of model or semantic interpretation