Re: Using the RM for ADTs

From: David BL <davidbl_at_iinet.net.au>
Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 19:26:53 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <f2c89a8c-4551-4ec3-aa6e-720606808d6a_at_b25g2000prb.googlegroups.com>


On Jul 9, 9:16 pm, "Brian Selzer" <br..._at_selzer-software.com> wrote:

>

> I wasn't denying that there is symmetry, nor that it poses problems for
> identification. What I'm arguing is that despite the symmetry, there are
> still 8 nodes and 12 resistors in the cube example, which means that there
> must be a means to distinguish between the nodes and the resistors, for
> things that are indistinguishable are the same thing: that is the essence of
> identity. The nodes and components in a circuit template can be thought of
> as verticies and hyperedges in a connected hypergraph. Certainly each
> vertex can be distinguished from all other verticies and each hyperedge can
> be distinguished from all other hyperedges in the same hypergraph, can't
> they?

Ok, I understand what you're saying now.

I think it is useful to distinguish two mutually exclusive sets:

S1: The set of all circuit values where nodes and components have been uniquely identified. The labels are regarded as part of the circuit value.

S2: The set of equivalence classes over S1 according to the equivalence relation defined by isomorphism

It turns out that it is difficult to represent elements of S2 other than by using some arbitrary representative taken from S1. That is why abstract identifiers necessarily appear in the model.

All nodes and components have unique identity in an element of S1. However this doesn't apply to an element of S2 when there is self symmetry in the sense of a nontrivial automorphism.

BTW I find it very interesting that the graph isomorphism problem is NP but has not yet been proven P nor NPC. In fact it is suspected that it is neither! Received on Fri Jul 10 2009 - 04:26:53 CEST

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