Selling category theory for the masses

[timelets]

http://www.lmpa.univ-littoral.fr/~sic/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/BobCoeckeCalais.pdf









Bob Coecke is doing some interesting work!

Comments

[ecreet]

This metaphor only goes so far though: once your stuff is graded (in physics that would be super- theories), things stop commuting and start commuting with signs, e.g. (1\otimes g)\circ (f \otimes 1) = (-1)^{(deg g)(deg f)}(f\otimes 1)\circ(1\otimes g). How do you explain that in terms of cooking?

[timelets]

I don't know yet. Although, their "day job" in physics is quantum mechanics, which makes me think that they go beyond cooking recipes when they publish physics papers.

[ecreet]

They probably didn't learn it the cooking way either. I am trying to say that it is unclear to me whether this approach is useful for people who want to work with this stuff and are not merely wondering what this thing called category theory is all about. In other words, whether people can transition to the proper definitions once they develop their intuition via a limited metaphor.

[timelets]

To me, the question is whether everybody needs proper definitions to use CT productively and rigorously. The probability that their approach will hurt somebody's transition to more theoretical concepts is negligibly low.Also, I know from some psych research that solving problems using visuals can be 10 to 100 times more effective than with texts. From this perspective, more power to them!