News Archives

Decision Procedures For Sets

September 1, 2005

  • Date: Thursday, September 1, 2005 
  • Time: 11:00-12:15pm. 
  • Place: Woodward 149

Dr. Calogero Zarba
Department of Computer Science University of New Mexico

Suppose your best friend told you that

union(x, y) = x, for all sets x, y.

Would you believe her?

In this talk we present a method for automatically deciding if your friend told you the truth.

This method can be implemented in your favorite programming language. Moreover, when the number of involved sets is “small”, this method can be carried out on a blackboard using old-fashioned chalks.