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Ackermann Function
In computability theory, the Ackermann function, named after Wilhelm Ackermann, is one of the simplest and earliest-discovered examples of a total computable function that is not primitive recursive. All primitive recursive functions are total and computable, but the Ackermann function illustrates that not all total computable functions are primitive recursive. After Ackermann's publication of his function (which had three non-negative integer arguments), many authors modified it to suit various purposes, so that today "the Ackermann function" may refer to any of numerous variants of the original function. One common version is the two-argument Ackermann–Péter function developed by Rózsa Péter and Raphael Robinson. This function is defined from the recurrence relation \operatorname(m+1, n+1) = \operatorname(m, \operatorname(m+1, n)) with appropriate base cases. Its value grows very rapidly; for example, \operatorname(4, 2) results in 2^ - 3, an integer with 19,729 decima ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computability Theory
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] |
Reuben Goodstein
Reuben Louis Goodstein (15 December 1912 – 8 March 1985) was an English mathematician with an interest in the philosophy and teaching of mathematics. Education Goodstein was educated at St Paul's School in London. He received his Master's degree from Magdalene College, Cambridge. After this, he worked at the University of Reading but ultimately spent most of his academic career at the University of Leicester. He earned his PhD from the University of London in 1946 while still working in Reading. Goodstein also studied under Ludwig Wittgenstein. Research He published many works on finitism and the reconstruction of analysis from a finitistic viewpoint, for example "Constructive Formalism. Essays on the foundations of mathematics." Goodstein's theorem was among the earliest examples of theorems found to be unprovable in Peano arithmetic but provable in stronger logical systems (such as second-order arithmetic). He also introduced a variant of the Ackermann function that i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Python (programming Language)
Python is a high-level programming language, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation. Python is type system#DYNAMIC, dynamically type-checked and garbage collection (computer science), garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming paradigms, including structured programming, structured (particularly procedural programming, procedural), object-oriented and functional programming. It is often described as a "batteries included" language due to its comprehensive standard library. Guido van Rossum began working on Python in the late 1980s as a successor to the ABC (programming language), ABC programming language, and he first released it in 1991 as Python 0.9.0. Python 2.0 was released in 2000. Python 3.0, released in 2008, was a major revision not completely backward-compatible with earlier versions. Python 2.7.18, released in 2020, was the last release of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Off-side Rule
The off-side rule describes syntax of a computer programming language that defines the bounds of a code block via indentation. The term was coined by Peter Landin, possibly as a pun on the offside law in association football. An off-side rule language is contrasted with a free-form language in which indentation has no syntactic meaning, and indentation is strictly a matter of style. An off-side rule language is also described as having significant indentation. Definition Peter Landin, in his 1966 article " The Next 700 Programming Languages", defined the off-side rule thus: "Any non-whitespace token to the left of the first such token on the previous line is taken to be the start of a new declaration." Example The following is an example of indentation blocks in Python; a popular off-side rule language. In Python, the rule is taken to define the boundaries of statements rather than declarations. def is_even(a: int) -> bool: if a % 2 0: print('Eve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
LOOP (programming Language)
LOOP is a simple register language that precisely captures the primitive recursive functions. The language is derived from the counter-machine model. Like the counter machines the LOOP language comprises a set of one or more unbounded ''registers'', each of which can hold a single non-negative integer. A few arithmetic instructions (like 'CleaR', 'INCrement', 'DECrement', 'CoPY', ...) operate on the registers. The only control flow instruction is 'LOOP x DO ''...'' END'. It causes the instructions within its scope to be repeated x times. (Changes of the content of register x during the execution of the loop do not affect the number of passes.) History The LOOP language was formulated in a 1967 paper by Albert R. Meyer and Dennis M. Ritchie. They showed the correspondence between the LOOP language and primitive recursive functions. The language also was the topic of the unpublished PhD thesis of Ritchie. It was also presented by Uwe Schöning, along with GOTO and WHILE ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fast-growing Hierarchy
In computability theory, computational complexity theory and proof theory, a fast-growing hierarchy (also called an extended Grzegorczyk hierarchy, or a Schwichtenberg-Wainer hierarchy) is an ordinal-indexed family of rapidly increasing functions ''f''α: N → N (where N is the set of natural numbers , and α ranges up to some large countable Ordinal number, ordinal). A primary example is the Wainer hierarchy, or Löb–Wainer hierarchy, which is an extension to all α < Epsilon numbers (mathematics), ε0. Such hierarchies provide a natural way to classify computable functions according to rate-of-growth and Computational complexity theory, computational complexity. Definition Let μ be a large countable ordinal such that to every limit ordinal α < μ there is assigned a fundamental sequence (ordinals), fundamental sequence (a strictly increasing sequence of ordinals whose supremum is α). A fast-growing hierarchy of functions ''f''α: N ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Currying
In mathematics and computer science, currying is the technique of translating a function that takes multiple arguments into a sequence of families of functions, each taking a single argument. In the prototypical example, one begins with a function f:(X\times Y)\to Z that takes two arguments, one from X and one from Y, and produces objects in Z. The curried form of this function treats the first argument as a parameter, so as to create a family of functions f_x :Y\to Z. The family is arranged so that for each object x in X, there is exactly one function f_x. In this example, \mbox itself becomes a function that takes f as an argument, and returns a function that maps each x to f_x. The proper notation for expressing this is verbose. The function f belongs to the set of functions (X\times Y)\to Z. Meanwhile, f_x belongs to the set of functions Y\to Z. Thus, something that maps x to f_x will be of the type X\to \to Z With this notation, \mbox is a function that takes objects from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Associative
In mathematics, the associative property is a property of some binary operations that rearranging the parentheses in an expression will not change the result. In propositional logic, associativity is a valid rule of replacement for expressions in logical proofs. Within an expression containing two or more occurrences in a row of the same associative operator, the order in which the operations are performed does not matter as long as the sequence of the operands is not changed. That is (after rewriting the expression with parentheses and in infix notation if necessary), rearranging the parentheses in such an expression will not change its value. Consider the following equations: \begin (2 + 3) + 4 &= 2 + (3 + 4) = 9 \,\\ 2 \times (3 \times 4) &= (2 \times 3) \times 4 = 24 . \end Even though the parentheses were rearranged on each line, the values of the expressions were not altered. Since this holds true when performing addition and multiplication on any real numbers, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Function Composition
In mathematics, the composition operator \circ takes two function (mathematics), functions, f and g, and returns a new function h(x) := (g \circ f) (x) = g(f(x)). Thus, the function is function application, applied after applying to . (g \circ f) is pronounced "the composition of and ". Reverse composition, sometimes denoted f \mapsto g , applies the operation in the opposite order, applying f first and g second. Intuitively, reverse composition is a chaining process in which the output of function feeds the input of function . The composition of functions is a special case of the composition of relations, sometimes also denoted by \circ. As a result, all properties of composition of relations are true of composition of functions, such as #Properties, associativity. Examples * Composition of functions on a finite set (mathematics), set: If , and , then , as shown in the figure. * Composition of functions on an infinite set: If (where is the set of all real numbers) is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iterated Function
In mathematics, an iterated function is a function that is obtained by composing another function with itself two or several times. The process of repeatedly applying the same function is called iteration. In this process, starting from some initial object, the result of applying a given function is fed again into the function as input, and this process is repeated. For example, on the image on the right: : Iterated functions are studied in computer science, fractals, dynamical systems, mathematics and renormalization group physics. Definition The formal definition of an iterated function on a set ''X'' follows. Let be a set and be a function. Defining as the ''n''-th iterate of , where ''n'' is a non-negative integer, by: f^0 ~ \stackrel ~ \operatorname_X and f^ ~ \stackrel ~ f \circ f^, where is the identity function on and denotes function composition. This notation has been traced to and John Frederick William Herschel in 1813. Herschel credited ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematical Induction
Mathematical induction is a method for mathematical proof, proving that a statement P(n) is true for every natural number n, that is, that the infinitely many cases P(0), P(1), P(2), P(3), \dots all hold. This is done by first proving a simple case, then also showing that if we assume the claim is true for a given case, then the next case is also true. Informal metaphors help to explain this technique, such as falling dominoes or climbing a ladder: A proof by induction consists of two cases. The first, the base case, proves the statement for n = 0 without assuming any knowledge of other cases. The second case, the induction step, proves that ''if'' the statement holds for any given case n = k, ''then'' it must also hold for the next case n = k + 1. These two steps establish that the statement holds for every natural number n. The base case does not necessarily begin with n = 0, but often with n = 1, and possibly with any fixed natural number n = N, establishing the trut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Knuth's Up-arrow Notation
In mathematics, Knuth's up-arrow notation is a method of notation for very large integers, introduced by Donald Knuth in 1976. In his 1947 paper, R. L. Goodstein introduced the specific sequence of operations that are now called ''hyperoperations''. Goodstein also suggested the Greek names tetration, pentation, etc., for the extended operations beyond exponentiation. The sequence starts with a unary operation (the successor function with ''n'' = 0), and continues with the binary operations of addition (''n'' = 1), multiplication (''n'' = 2), exponentiation (''n'' = 3), tetration (''n'' = 4), pentation (''n'' = 5), etc. Various notations have been used to represent hyperoperations. One such notation is H_n(a,b). Knuth's up-arrow notation \uparrow is another. For example: * the single arrow \uparrow represents exponentiation (iterated multiplication) 2 \uparrow 4 = H_3(2,4) = 2\times(2\times(2\times 2)) = 2^4 = 16 * the double arrow \uparrow\uparrow represents tetration (iterated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
