The Potsdam Cartesian Seminar is an open topic weekly seminar that was started
in 2000 by Rupert Klein and Cezar Ionescu at the Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research and is located at the Institute of Computer Science of the University
of Potsdam since 2014. Guided by the rules René Descartes formulated in his “Discours
de la méthode” we aim for a thorough understanding of the texts we read.
Participants
Present
Sebastian Böhne, Nicola Botta, Nuria Brede, Georg Duchrau, Christoph Glinzer, Hanna Gloyna,
Jan Heuer, Cezar Ionescu, Niklas Kämmer, Lucas Kerschke, David Simon Kuska,
Tim Münzner, Tim Richter, Juliane Scherlitzki, Marius Wawerek, Max Wiedenhöft, Jonas Winter, David Zimmek
Past
Marc Beilcke, Nikolas Bertrand, Frederick Brumm, Margrit Dittmann, Ingram Jaccard, Henrik Jürges, Manuel Keilmann, Thomas Kern, Christoph Kreitz, Marc Fabian Lindner, David Linkiewicz, Eva Richter, Carla Schreiber, Matthias Seidel, Jessica Trebst, Luise Werner, Axel Wiepke
Guests are always welcome!
Place and time
Tuesdays, 10-12 am
Institute of Computer Science, University of Potsdam
Campus Griebnitzsee (August-Bebel-Str. 89)
Building 4, Room 2.01
Current reading (winter term 2020/2021)
Due to the Coronavirus pandemic we meet online. For the actual links and help with the setup,
please contact tim@cs.uni-potsdam.de.
February 23rd and March 2nd: Jonas on the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma
February 9th and 16th: Max on Evolutionary Game Theory
January 26th and February 2nd: Jonas on Clustering
January 12th and 19th: Tim Münzner on Computer Vision and Convolutional Neural Networks
December 15th and January 5th: Niklas on Basics of Supervised Machine Learning (Perceptron, Gradient Descent)
December 1st and December 8th: David on Cellular Automata
starting November 3rd
- Bernardy, Ionescu, Jansson : Domain specific languages of mathematics
(checkout the github repository, make sure you have installed latex and lhs2TeX,
and do a “make” in subdirectory “L”. This should produce “DSLsofMathBook.pdf”.)
September 22nd - October 27th
- Graham Hutton - 1997 - Conceps of Concurrency
Archive
Summer term 2020
July 14th and 21st: Fabian on Shellcodes
June 30th and July 10th: Hanna on Probabilistic Algorithms
June 16th and June 23rd: Marius on Tolman
starting April 21st
Winter term 2019/2020
starting February 25th: on Lawvere’s ETCS
January 21st to February 10th: Christoph on Random Walks and Electric Networks
Selection from
January 7th and 14th: Nico on Graphical Languages
We read the first half of
starting November 19th: Dynamical Systems
starting October 8th: Sebastian on Manfred Spitzer’s “Digitale Demenz” - continuation
Summer term 2019
September 17th, 24th, October 1st: Blockchain technology
starting July 23rd: Jan on Answer set programming
July 2nd, 9th, 16th: Nicola on responsibility and blame
starting June 4th: Sebastian on Manfred Spitzer’s “Digitale Demenz”
May 21st, 28th : Nicola on thermodynamics
- Straumann - 1986 - Thermodynamik
April 16th - May 14th :
Winter term 2018/2019
19. and 26.02.2019 : Jessica on DNA computing
with sidesteps to
starting January 2019: Nicola on thermodynamics
- Straumann - 1986 - Thermodynamik
- Bridgman - 1922 - Dimensional Analysis
11. and 18.12.2018 : Luise on Hans Liebigs “Konrad Zuse - Erfinder des Computers”
September 2018
with sidesteps to
Summer term 2018
June 2018 - Georg on “Ernst Mach: The Science of Mechanics”
- Mach - 1919 - The Science of Mechanics
- Mach - 1897 - Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung - historisch-kritisch dargestellt (3rd ed)
- Ernst Mach - 1912 - Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung - historisch-kritisch dagestellt
March 2018
- Richard von Mises: Wahrscheinlichkeit, Statistik und Wahrheit
- Richard von Mises: Probability, Statistics, and Truth
- see also: Interpretations of Probability (SEP)
Winter term 2017/18
proposals for summer term 2018
- Nicola:
- Richard von Mises - 1928 - Wahrscheinlichkeit, Statistik und Wahrheit
- Thomas Kuhn: Black Body Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity 1894-1912 (Chicago & London, 1978)
- Tim:
- McBride - Turing-Completeness Totally Free
January 2018
- Ulrike Herrmann - Kein Kapitalismus ist auch keine Lösung - Kapitel 3 on Adam Smith
- see also: Adam Smith’s Moral and Political Theory (SEP)
- we’ll read the version with notes by Favio Miranda from the Seminar “Recursion for Coalgebras” 2001
- published paper: Pavlović, Escardó - 1998 - Calculus in Coinductive Form (IEEE Symposium Logic in Computer Science)
- see also: Continuity and Infinitesimals (SEP)
- Nicola’s Idris formalization: CoinductiveCalculus.lidr
Summer term 2017
Winter term 2016/17
- presented by Axel: The Turing Test (SEP)
- Paul Lorenzen - 1965 - Methodisches Denken
Summer term 2016
- Noam Chomsky - 1956 - Three Models for the Description of Language
- Hans Wäsche - 1959 - Eine Bemerkung zur Paradoxie des Zeno von Elea über “Achilles und die Schildkröte”
Winter term 2015/16
- Korb - 1977 - Einführung in die Spieltheorie mit Beispielen aus der Wirtschaftspraxis
- Brown, Priest - 2004 - Chunk and permeate, a paraconsistent inference strategy. part I - the infinitesimal calculus
- presented by Carla and Thomas: Dirk Hoffmann - 2011 - Grenzen der Mathematik - Kapitel 4 : Beweistheorie
- Ingeborg Brettschneider-Clasen - 1967 - Das Antinomieproblem
Summer term 2015
- Einstein - 1921 - Über die spezielle und allgemeine Relativitätstheorie
- presented by Frederick:
- Turing - 1950 - The Word Problem in Semi-Groups with Cancellation
- Boone - 1958 - An Analysis of Turing’s “The Word Problem in Semi-Groups with Cancellation”
Winter term 2014/15
- Abel, Pientka, Thibodeau, Setzer: Copatterns - Programming Infinite Structures by Observations
- presented by Tim: Ihringer - 2003 - Allgemeine Algebra
- see also: Hyland, Power - 2007 - The Category Theoretic Understanding of Universal Algebra - Lawvere Theories and Monads
Summer term 2014
- Planck - 1932 - Der Kausalbegriff in der Physik
- Planck - 1908 - Die Einheit des physikalischen Weltbildes
- Turner - 2004 - Total functional programming
- Wells - 1995 - Communicating Mathematics - Unseful Ideas from Computer Science
Winter term 2013/14
- Tarski - 1986(1966) - What are logical notions?
- Tarski - 1935 - Der Wahrheitsbegriff in den formalisierten Sprachen
Summer term 2013
- continued: Frege - Begriffsschrift
- Hilbert - 1918 - Axiomatisches Denken
- Frege - 1891 - Function und Begriff
Winter term 2012/13
- Turing - 1936 - On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem
- Sebastian presents Frege - 1879 - Begriffsschrift
Summer term 2012
- Tarski - 1936 - Grundlegung der wissenschaftlichen Semantik
- Lawvere - 1969 - Diagonal Arguments and Cartesian Closed Categories
Winter term 2011/12
- Kolmogorov - 1931 - Zur Deutung der intuitionistischen Logik
- Church - 1932 - A Set of Postulates for the Foundation of Logic
- Cardone, Hindley - 2009 - Lambda-Calculus and Combinators in the 20th Century