Category Archives: Tutorial

Topics that are targeted at a wider audience.

Seemingly impossible functional programs

Andrej has invited me to write about certain surprising functional
programs.
The first program, due to Ulrich Berger (1990), performs exhaustive
search over the “Cantor space” of infinite sequences of binary
digits. I have included references at the end. A weak form of
exhaustive search amounts to checking whether or not a total predicate
holds for all elements of the Cantor space. Thus, this amounts to
universal quantification over the Cantor space. Can this possibly be
done algorithmically, in finite time?
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On a proof of Cantor’s theorem

The famous theorem by Cantor states that the cardinality of a powerset $P(A)$ is larger than the cardinality of $A$. There are several equivalent formulations, and the one I want to consider is

Theorem (Cantor): There is no onto map $A \to P(A)$.

In this post I would like to analyze the usual proof of Cantor’s theorem and present an insightful reformulation of it which has applications outside set theory. Continue reading On a proof of Cantor’s theorem

König’s Lemma and the Kleene Tree

For the benefit of the topology seminar audience at the math department of University of Ljubljana, I have written a self-contained explanation of the Kleene tree, which is an interesting object in computability theory. For the benefit of the rest of the planet, I am publishing it here.
Continue reading König’s Lemma and the Kleene Tree

Sometimes all functions are continuous

You may have heard at times that there are mathematicians who think that all functions are continuous. One way of explaining this is to show that all computable functions are continuous. The point not appreciated by many (even experts) is that the truth of this claim depends on what programming language we use.
Continue reading Sometimes all functions are continuous