Course pages 2016–17
Category Theory and Logic
Lecture slides and notes
- Lecture 1 (7 Oct) Introduction; some history; content of this course. Definition of category. The category of sets and functions. Commutative diagrams. Alternative definitions of category.
- Lecture 2 (10 Oct) Examples of categories: pre-ordered sets and monotone functions; monoids and monoid homomorphisms; a pre-ordered set as a category; a monoid as a category. Definition of isomorphism.
- Lecture 3 (14 Oct) Terminal objects. The opposite of a category and the duality principle. Initial objects. Free monoids as initial objects.
- Lecture 4 (17 Oct) Binary products and coproducts.
- Lecture 5 (21 Oct) Exponential objects: in the category of sets and in general. Cartesian closed categories: definition and examples.
- Lecture 6 (24 Oct) Intuitionistic Propositional Logic (IPL) in Natural Deduction style. Semantics of IPL in a cartesian closed pre-ordered set.
- Brief notes on the category theoretic semantics of Simply Typed Lambda Calculus.
- Lecture 7 (28 Oct) Simply Typed Lambda Calculus (STLC). Alpha equivalence of terms. The typing relation. Semantics of STLC types in a cartesian closed category (ccc).
- Lecture 8 (31 Oct) Semantics of STLC terms as morphisms in a ccc. Capture-avoiding substitution for lambda terms. Semantics of substitution in a ccc.
- Lecture 9 (4 Nov) Soundness of the ccc semantics for beta-eta equality of lambda terms. The internal language of a ccc. Free cccs. The Curry-Howard-Lawvere/Lambek correspondence.
- Lecture 10 (7 Nov) Functors. Contravariance. Identity and composition for functors. Size: small categories and locally small categories. The category of small categories. Finite products of categories.
- Lecture 11 (11 Nov) Natural transformations. Functor categories. The category of small categories is cartesian closed.
- Lecture 12 (14 Nov) Adjunctions. Examples of adjoint functors. Hom functors. Natural isomorphisms.
- Lecture 13 (18 Nov) Theorem characterizing the existence of right (respectively left) adjoints in terms of a universal property.
- Lecture 14 (21 Nov) Dependent types. Dependent product sets and dependent function sets as adjoint functors.
- Lecture 15 (25 Nov) Equivalence of categories. Example: the category of I-indexed sets and functions is equivalent to the slice category Set/I. Presheaf categories. The Yoneda functor.
- Lecture 16 (28 Nov) The Yoneda lemma. Presheaf categories are cartesian closed.
Exercise sheets
- Exercise Sheet 1
- Exercise Sheet 2
- Exercise Sheet 3
- Exercise Sheet 4
- Exercise Sheet 5
- Exercise Sheet 6
Office hours
- The module lecturer will be available to answer questions about the course material and exercises on Wednesdays between 12:00 and 13:00 in FC08 during Full Term.
Additional material
- The following is the classic text on category theory and is
definitely worth looking at if you are feeling mathematically
mature:
Mac Lane, Saunders. Categories for the Working Mathematician. Graduate Texts in Mathematics 5, second ed. (Springer, 1988), ISBN 0-387-98403-8.
- A student-oriented guide to on-line material on Category Theory is available at http://www.logicmatters.net/categories/.
- The Category Theory Seminar is held at 2.15pm on Tuesdays in Room MR5 of the Centre for Mathematical Sciences.
- Julia Goedecke's Category Theory course for the 2013/4 Mathematical Tripos Part III / Masters of Mathematics.
- Category Theory in the nLab.
- The Catsters' Category Theory Videos.
- Eugenia Cheng's book on Cakes, Custard and Category Theory (published in the US under the title "How to Bake Pi").