BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Composition in Categories of Games - Nathan Bowler\, DPMMS
DTSTART:20091201T141500Z
DTEND:20091201T154500Z
UID:TALK20995@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Julia Goedecke
DESCRIPTION:A common intuitive construction of categories of games encodes
  the basic combinatorics involved in various approaches to the study of ga
 mes\, for example Conway's recursively structured theory\, or the speciali
 sed theory of hypergraph games. These ideas have provided some key example
 s of models of (various fragments of) intuitionistic and linear logic. Suc
 h categories have also been used to construct denotational semantics for v
 arious abstract programming languages\, including the construction of a fu
 lly abstract model for PCF.\n\nI'll begin by outlining how this intuitive 
 construction works. I'll give an example of such a category (based on bico
 loured digraphs) which allows the incorporation of some of the structure o
 f the theory of hypergraph games\, and I'll explain how this construction 
 points to the language of fc-multicategories as a natural setting for the 
 development of additional structure in categories of games. This language 
 also provides a new setting for the construction of existing categories of
  games. I'll illustrate how the constructions in this setting have a modul
 ar form\, cleanly separating different aspects of the underlying combinato
 rics\, and I'll sketch some possible applications to the development of ne
 w constructions.
LOCATION:MR9\, Centre for Mathematical Sciences
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR