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Logic Seminar
The seminar is usually on Mondays, from 11.00 to 12.30. The location is the Institute of Mathematics, Žitná 25, in the lecture hall on the ground floor of the rear building. The programme is announced via the mailing list.
Monday 2nd March, 11.00amStefano Cavagnetto, "Euclid’s Elements"
Euclid’s Elements is one of the most beautiful and influential works of mathematics in the history of science. Its beauty relies on its logical development of geometry and other branches of mathematics. The Elements have influenced all branches of science but none as much as mathematics. Entire generations of mathematicians have been shaped by this masterpiece and its influence is still vivid in modern mathematics. Although many of the results contained in this work originated earlier, one of Euclid’s achievements was to present them in a single and logically coherent framework. This made it easy to use the contents and easy to reference them for other mathematicians. The system of rigorous mathematical proofs still remains the basis of modern mathematics.
In this talk I will give a quick overview of the contents of the Elements in the order they appear in the thirteen books. I’ll focus in some detail on the first two books and on their logical structure with the aim of giving a good grasp of Euclid’s modernity. Finally I’ll discuss a small fragment of papyrus containing the Proposition 5 of Book II. This fragment was found among the remarkable rubbish pile of Oxyrhynchus in 1896-97 and it can be interpreted in modern terms, as other results in Book II, as a geometric formulation of algebraic problems.
The logic seminar is intended for people doing research in mathematical logic, including doctoral students. Talks are given by regular participants and guests on their own work as well as on interesting recent developments in the field. The prevailing themes in recent years are proof complexity, bounded arithmetic and logical aspects of computational complexity theory in general. Regular participants include members of the logic group, including a number of postdoctoral visitors and Ph.D. students. The seminars are conducted in English unless all participants speak Czech (which seems to never happen).
There is also a student logic seminar at Charles University, intended for undergraduate students.
The seminar has been organized continuously since the early 1970s, first by Petr Hájek for more than twenty years, from the early 90s until the summer of 2008 mostly by Jan Krajíček, and since fall 2008 by Neil Thapen.
Kod predmetu (MFF UK): AIL056 (zimni semestr) a AIL080 (letni semestr)
Past programme
- 6th October 2008 - Leszek Kołodziejczyk, "Building models for very weak theories of arithmetic" - I will discuss a new method for constructing nonstandard models of weak fragments of bounded arithmetic, developed primarily in a paper by Boughattas and Ressayre. The method, inspired by algebraic techniques used in the study of open induction, is based on the idea that a model can be built from nonstandard reals rather than just nonstandard integers. It has been applied to obtain new independence results for weakened versions of \Sigma^b_1 induction and for Buss' theory T^0_2.
- 13th October - Phuong Nguyen, "Separating DAG-like and Tree-like Proof Systems" - I will present my paper "Separating DAG-like and Tree-like Proof Systems" in LICS 2007. In particular, I will show that constant-depth treelike Frege proof systems do not simulate cut-free daglike Frege, and that depth-d treelike Frege does not simulate depth-(2d+5) treelike Frege. The latter implies that the Sigma_0^B consequences of V^0 is not finitely axiomatizable. The proof method is an improvement and simplification of an earlier paper by Maciel and Pitassi, and is applicable to the sequents invented by Statman whose lowerbounds and upperbounds have been shown by elegant arguments.
- 20th October - Emil Jeřábek, "Abelian groups and quadratic residues in weak arithmetic" - We investigate the provability of some properties of abelian groups and quadratic residues in variants of bounded arithmetic. Specifically, we show that the structure theorem for finite abelian groups is provable in T^2_2, and use it to derive Fermat's little theorem and Euler's criterion for the Legendre symbol in T^2_2 extended by the pigeonhole principle. We prove the quadratic reciprocity theorem (including the supplementary laws) in bounded arithmetic extended with modulo-2 counting principles.
- 3rd November - Emil Jeřábek, "Abelian groups and quadratic residues in weak arithmetic", Part 2
- 10th November - Arnold Beckmann, "Polynomial local search in the polynomial hierarchy and witnessing in fragments of bounded arithmetic" - The complexity class of \Pi^p_k-polynomial local search (PLS) problems is introduced and is used to give new witnessing theorems for fragments of bounded arithmetic. These \Pi^p_k-PLS problems can be defined in a weak base theory such as S^1_2, and proved to be total in T^{k+1}_2 . Furthermore, the \Pi^p_k-PLS definitions can be skolemized with simple polynomial time functions, and the witnessing theorem itself can be formalized, and skolemized, in a weak base theory. This gives rise to a new \forall\Sigma^b_1(X)-principle that is conjectured to separate T^k_2(X) and T^{k+1}_2(X).
- 14th November - Barbara Csima, "Computable structure theory" - In computable structure theory, one examines various countably infinite structures (such as linear orderings and graphs) for their computability theoretic properties. For example, the standard theorem that any two countable dense linear orders without endpoints are isomorphic can be carried out computably, in the sense that if the two countable dense linear orders are nicely presented, then there must be a computable isomorphism between them. However, there are many examples of computable structures that are isomorphic but not computably isomorphic. This talk will be an introduction to computable structure theory, explaining some standard examples, and indicating areas of current research.
- 8th December - Iddo Tzameret, "The Proof Complexity of Polynomial Identities" -Devising an efficient deterministic -- or even a non-deterministic sub-exponential time -- algorithm for testing polynomial identities is a fundamental problem in algebraic complexity and complexity at large. Motivated by this problem, as well as by results from proof complexity, we investigate the complexity of proving polynomial identities. To this end, we study a class of equational proof systems, of varying strength, operating with polynomial identities written as arithmetic formulas over a given ring. A proof in these systems establishes that two arithmetic formulas compute the same polynomial, and consists of a sequence of equations between polynomials, written as arithmetic formulas, where each equation in the sequence is derived from previous equations by means of the polynomial-ring axioms. This works establishes non-trivial upper and lower bounds on the size of equational proofs of polynomial identities. In this talk I will present the basic model of equational proofs, argue for its relevance and importance in both algebraic complexity and proof complexity, and demonstrate several upper and lower bounds, in various fragments of equational proofs. Joint work with Pavel Hrubes.
- 15th December - Iddo Tzameret, "The Proof Complexity of Polynomial Identities", Part 2
- 12th January 2009 - Iddo Tzameret, "The Proof Complexity of Polynomial Identities", Part 3
- 26th January - Jindřich Zapletal, "Borel equivalences and their applications" - The study of Borel equivalence relations is growing at a very fast rate. These equivalences are compared according to a natural notion of complexity, resulting in a rich map. It turns out that such branches of mathematics as algebra, ergodic theory, or functional analysis contain key equivalences that can be placed on this map, leading to a precise quantification of their difficulty. The lecture is an invitation to a course I will teach this term at the Department of Mathematical Analysis at Charles University.
- 9th February - Olaf Beyersdorff, "The complexity of reasoning for fragments of default logic" - Default logic was introduced by Reiter in 1980. In 1992, Gottlob classified the complexity of the extension existence problem for propositional default logic as $\Sigma_2^p$-complete, and the complexity of the credulous and skeptical reasoning problem as $\Sigma_2^p$-complete, resp. $\Pi_2^p$-complete. Additionally, he investigated restrictions on the default rules, i.e., semi-normal default rules. Selman made in 1992 a similar approach with disjunction-free and unary default rules. In this talk we systematically restrict the set of allowed propositional connectives. We give a complete complexity classification for all sets of Boolean functions in the meaning of Post's lattice for all three common decision problems for propositional default logic. We show that the complexity is a trichotomy ($Sigma_2^p$-, NP-complete, trivial) for the extension existence problem, whereas for the credulous and sceptical reasoning problem we get a finer classification down to NL-complete cases. The results described in the talk are joint work with Arne Meier, Michael Thomas, and Heribert Vollmer.
- 16th February - Pavel Pudlák, "On platonism, intuitionism and Hilbert" - I will present a part of a chapter of the book I am writing. I plan to say more about the philosophy of mathematics later this semester.
Programme archive for 1995 - Summer 2008
Auxiliary Links
Jech's library of preprints/reprints in set theory is available to students in our department
13/10/08 Neil Thapen
