|
The Halting Problem
In computability theory, the halting problem is the problem of determining, from a description of an arbitrary computer program and an input, whether the program will finish running, or continue to run forever. The halting problem is '' undecidable'', meaning that no general algorithm exists that solves the halting problem for all possible program–input pairs. The problem comes up often in discussions of computability since it demonstrates that some functions are mathematically definable but not computable. A key part of the formal statement of the problem is a mathematical definition of a computer and program, usually via a Turing machine. The proof then shows, for any program that might determine whether programs halt, that a "pathological" program exists for which makes an incorrect determination. Specifically, is the program that, when called with some input, passes its own source and its input to ''f'' and does the opposite of what predicts will do. The behavior of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computability Theory (computer Science)
Computability theory, also known as recursion theory, is a branch of mathematical logic, computer science, and the theory of computation that originated in the 1930s with the study of computable functions and Turing degrees. The field has since expanded to include the study of generalized computability and definable set, definability. In these areas, computability theory overlaps with proof theory and effective descriptive set theory. Basic questions addressed by computability theory include: * What does it mean for a function (mathematics), function on the natural numbers to be computable? * How can noncomputable functions be classified into a hierarchy based on their level of noncomputability? Although there is considerable overlap in terms of knowledge and methods, mathematical computability theorists study the theory of relative computability, reducibility notions, and degree structures; those in the computer science field focus on the theory of computational complexity theory ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rule Of Least Power
In programming, the rule of least power is a design principle that "suggests choosing the least powerful omputerlanguage suitable for a given purpose". Stated alternatively, given a choice among computer languages, classes of which range from descriptive (or ''declarative'') to procedural, the less procedural, more descriptive the language one chooses, the more one can do with the data stored in that language. This rule is an application of the principle of least privilege to protocol design. The Rule of Least Power is an example in context of the centuries older principle known as Occam's razor in philosophy. In particular, arguments for and against the Rule of Least Power are subject to the same analysis as for Occam's razor. Rationale Originally proposed as an axiom of good design, the term is an extension of the KISS principle applied to choosing among a range of languages ranging from * the plainly descriptive ones (such as the content of most databases, or progress ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marvin Minsky
Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive scientist, cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research in artificial intelligence (AI). He co-founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory and wrote extensively about AI and philosophy. Minsky received many accolades and honors, including the 1969 Turing Award. Early life and education Marvin Lee Minsky was born in New York City, to Henry, an eye surgeon, and Fannie (Reiser), a Zionism, Zionist activist. His family was Jewish. He attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School and the Bronx High School of Science. He later attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, Andover, Massachusetts. He then served in the United States Navy, US Navy from 1944 to 1945. He received a B.A. in mathematics from Harvard University in 1950 and a Doctor of Philosophy, Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University in 1954. His doctoral dissertation was titled "Theory of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tag System
In the theory of computation, a tag system is a deterministic model of computation published by Emil Leon Post in 1943 as a simple form of a Post canonical system. A tag system may also be viewed as an abstract machine, called a Post tag machine (not to be confused with Post–Turing machines)—briefly, a finite-state machine whose only tape is a FIFO queue of unbounded length, such that in each transition the machine reads the symbol at the head of the queue, deletes a constant number of symbols from the head, and appends to the tail a symbol-string that depends solely on the first symbol read in this transition. Because all of the indicated operations are performed in a single transition, a tag machine strictly has only one state. Definitions A ''tag system'' is a triplet (''m'', ''A'', ''P''), where * ''m'' is a positive integer, called the ''deletion number''. * ''A'' is a finite alphabet of symbols, one of which can be a special ''halting symbol''. All finite (possibl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emil Post
Emil Leon Post (; February 11, 1897 – April 21, 1954) was an American mathematician and logician. He is best known for his work in the field that eventually became known as computability theory. Life Post was born in Augustów, Suwałki Governorate, Congress Poland, Russian Empire (now Poland) into a Polish Jews, Polish-Jewish family that immigrated to New York City in May 1904. His parents were Arnold and Pearl Post. Post had been interested in astronomy, but at the age of twelve lost his left arm in a car accident. This loss was a significant obstacle to being a professional astronomer, leading to his decision to pursue mathematics rather than astronomy. Post attended the Townsend Harris High School and continued on to graduate from City College of New York in 1917 with a B.S. in mathematics. After completing his Doctor of philosophy, Ph.D. in mathematics in 1920 at Columbia University, supervised by Cassius Jackson Keyser, he did a post-doctorate at Princeton University in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peano Axioms
In mathematical logic, the Peano axioms (, ), also known as the Dedekind–Peano axioms or the Peano postulates, are axioms for the natural numbers presented by the 19th-century Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano. These axioms have been used nearly unchanged in a number of metamathematical investigations, including research into fundamental questions of whether number theory is consistent and complete. The axiomatization of arithmetic provided by Peano axioms is commonly called Peano arithmetic. The importance of formalizing arithmetic was not well appreciated until the work of Hermann Grassmann, who showed in the 1860s that many facts in arithmetic could be derived from more basic facts about the successor operation and induction. In 1881, Charles Sanders Peirce provided an axiomatization of natural-number arithmetic. In 1888, Richard Dedekind proposed another axiomatization of natural-number arithmetic, and in 1889, Peano published a simplified version of them as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Congress Of Mathematicians
The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the IMU Abacus Medal (known before 2022 as the Nevanlinna Prize), the Carl Friedrich Gauss Prize, Gauss Prize, and the Chern Medal are awarded during the congress's opening ceremony. Each congress is memorialized by a printed set of Proceedings recording academic papers based on invited talks intended to be relevant to current topics of general interest. Being List of International Congresses of Mathematicians Plenary and Invited Speakers, invited to talk at the ICM has been called "the equivalent ... of an induction to a hall of fame". History German mathematicians Felix Klein and Georg Cantor are credited with putting forward the idea of an international congress of mathematicians in the 1890s.A. John Coleman"Mathematics without borders": a book review. ''CMS Notes'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hilbert's Problems
Hilbert's problems are 23 problems in mathematics published by German mathematician David Hilbert in 1900. They were all unsolved at the time, and several proved to be very influential for 20th-century mathematics. Hilbert presented ten of the problems (1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 13, 16, 19, 21, and 22) at the Paris conference of the International Congress of Mathematicians, speaking on August 8 at the Sorbonne. The complete list of 23 problems was published later, in English translation in 1902 by Mary Frances Winston Newson in the ''Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society''. Earlier publications (in the original German) appeared in ''Archiv der Mathematik und Physik''. and Of the cleanly formulated Hilbert problems, numbers 3, 7, 10, 14, 17, 18, 19, 21, and 20 have resolutions that are accepted by consensus of the mathematical community. Problems 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, 15, and 22 have solutions that have partial acceptance, but there exists some controversy as to whether ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Hilbert
David Hilbert (; ; 23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician and philosopher of mathematics and one of the most influential mathematicians of his time. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas including invariant theory, the calculus of variations, commutative algebra, algebraic number theory, the foundations of geometry, spectral theory of operators and its application to integral equations, mathematical physics, and the foundations of mathematics (particularly proof theory). He adopted and defended Georg Cantor's set theory and transfinite numbers. In 1900, he presented a collection of problems that set a course for mathematical research of the 20th century. Hilbert and his students contributed to establishing rigor and developed important tools used in modern mathematical physics. He was a cofounder of proof theory and mathematical logic. Life Early life and education Hilbert, the first of two children and only son of O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turing's Proof
Turing's proof is a proof by Alan Turing, first published in November 1936 with the title "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the ". It was the second proof (after Church's theorem) of the negation of Hilbert's ; that is, the conjecture that some purely mathematical yes–no questions can never be answered by computation; more technically, that some decision problems are " undecidable" in the sense that there is no single algorithm that infallibly gives a correct "yes" or "no" answer to each instance of the problem. In Turing's own words: "what I shall prove is quite different from the well-known results of Gödel ... I shall now show that there is no general method which tells whether a given formula U is provable in K Principia_Mathematica.html" ;"title="'Principia Mathematica">'Principia Mathematica''. Turing followed this proof with two others. The second and third both rely on the first. All rely on his development of typewriter-like "Turing machine, computing m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lambda Calculus
In mathematical logic, the lambda calculus (also written as ''λ''-calculus) is a formal system for expressing computability, computation based on function Abstraction (computer science), abstraction and function application, application using variable Name binding, binding and Substitution (algebra), substitution. Untyped lambda calculus, the topic of this article, is a universal machine, a model of computation that can be used to simulate any Turing machine (and vice versa). It was introduced by the mathematician Alonzo Church in the 1930s as part of his research into the foundations of mathematics. In 1936, Church found a formulation which was #History, logically consistent, and documented it in 1940. Lambda calculus consists of constructing #Lambda terms, lambda terms and performing #Reduction, reduction operations on them. A term is defined as any valid lambda calculus expression. In the simplest form of lambda calculus, terms are built using only the following rules: # x: A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alonzo Church
Alonzo Church (June 14, 1903 – August 11, 1995) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who made major contributions to mathematical logic and the foundations of theoretical computer science. He is best known for the lambda calculus, the Church–Turing thesis, proving the unsolvability of the ''Entscheidungsproblem'' ("decision problem"), the Frege–Church ontology, and the Church–Rosser theorem. Alongside his doctoral student Alan Turing, Church is considered one of the founders of computer science. Life Alonzo Church was born on June 14, 1903, in Washington, D.C., where his father, Samuel Robbins Church, was a justice of the peace and the judge of the Municipal Court for the District of Columbia. He was the grandson of Alonzo Webster Church (1829–1909), United States Senate Librarian from 1881 to 1901, and great-grandson of Alonzo Church, a professor of Mathematics and Astronomy and 6th President of the University of Ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
