Subject: categories: A challenge (Re: Demystifying the categorial approach)

From: Steve Stevenson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2006 13:28:17 -0400

As an outsider, let me say something about outsiders in this. In a
word, "Where's the rosetta stone?" Here's what I mean.

I'm a numerical analyst/computer scientist. I'm ancient (much older
than 50), so I was brought up in the Dark Ages pre-computer, set-
theoretic world.

So I pick up Walters book, "Categories and computer science" and read
it. At the end, I say: OK, how do I work this into my undergraduate
classes? graduate classes? They've had discrete math in the Math
department and got no introduction to category theory. What does it
tell students about designing their current homework program? What
does this mechanism tell an undergrad about writing data structures?
What does it tell them about performance in networks? I see the point
about denotational semantics etc; I know none of our grad students
could read Walters. But if you can't retrain undergrads to switch
from what they know to a new world, it is not accepted because as
grad students they're not going to accept it either.

Now you can take a purist view and go your own way and I can go mine.
That's kinda silly. Hence, I'd settle for a rosetta stone.

Who will help me write an undergraduate text book on classic
computability concepts but from a categorical point of view? Pick
your favorite text. I suspect it would not be any help to anyone's
tenure case because it's all so obvious --- except to outsiders ---
but it would be a interesting and perhaps useful pedagogical device.
Would such a text be thinner or thicker than the original? What new
insights would we receive?

best regards,

steve
--------
D. E. Stevenson, Department of Computer Science
Director, Institute for Modeling and Simulation Applications
Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-0974
864.656.5880 http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~steve

On Apr 4, 2006, at 5:49 PM, Ronnie Brown wrote:

> I have not been able to keep  up with all this correspondence, but
> would
> like to take up Vaughan Pratt's counter to Reinhard Boerger's point
> saying:
> `it can't be done'  which would be better as a question: `How
> should one do
> it?'
>
[balance of quotation omitted...]