10 March 2022, 14:00, CYB-101

Speaker

Maaike Zwart

Title

Lessons from failing distributive laws

Abstract

Composing monads via distributive laws is tricky business, as too often small mistakes are overlooked. After failing to find a distributive law for the list monad over itself, I started proving that finding such a distributive law is impossible. At the same time, Dan Marsden was studying the famous counterexample by Gordon Plotkin that probability does not distribute over non-determinism. Together we developed an algebraic method to find and generalise such counterexamples, resulting in our no-go theorems. In this talk I will explain the main ideas behind our method, illustrated by a proof that 'plus does not distribute over times'. Then, I will highlight some crucial steps in our method, which tell us which type of monads are "high risk" in failing to compose with other monads. Lastly, I will say a few words about my current research on combining monads with guarded recursion.