Taylor Subsumes Scott, Berry, Kahn and Plotkin


Davide Barbarossa, LIPN (Paris 13). 13 février 2020 10:00 limd 2:00:00
Abstract:

The speculative ambition of replacing the old theory of program approximation based on syntactic continuity with the theory of resource consumption based on Taylor expansion and originating from the differential λ-calculus is nowadays at hand. Using this resource sensitive theory, we provide simple proofs of important results in λ-calculus that are usually demonstrated by exploiting Scott’s continuity, Berry’s stability or Kahn and Plotkin’s sequentiality theory. A paradigmatic example is given by the Perpendicular Lines Lemma for the Böhm tree semantics, which is proved here simply by induction, but relying on the main properties of resource approximants: strong normalization, confluence and linearity.