Author Archives: Bill Wadge

The title of this post is a real headline from the Berkeley Barb (many years ago). It made quite an impression on me at the time though it’s not clear what it means. I believe it was a discussion of … Continue reading →

Mathematicians discovered a new [whole] number. It’s between six and seven and is called “bleen”. -George Carlin When we’re talking about π, what are we talking about? What kind of object is it? A number, your text book will tell you. … Continue reading →

I’ve been to Greece often enough that I’ve picked up a bit of (modern) Greek. Like anyone in  my situation, I’ve had fun spotting Greek words with Englishs cognates based on Greek roots, popping up with unusual meanings in unusual contexts. … Continue reading →

Time for another break from research (at least the normal kind). I seem to be always discovering fundamental Laws of the Universe, especially about teaching. I’d like to share some of them with you.  They are each called “Wadge’s Law” … Continue reading →

Nothing says fun like formal power series! A formal power series is a (usually) infinite polynomial in x. For example 1 + x + x2 + x3 + x4 + … This is an expression, not a number. If we … Continue reading →

Lucid is based on a simple temporal logic. The time model follows from formalizing iteration as it appears in imperative programs with, say, while or for loops. In this model there is a first or initial time point, and every … Continue reading →

In the last post we introduced eod (end-of-data), a special sentinel value used to mark the end of a finite Lucid stream. Streams in Lucid are all formally infinite (non terminating) but we can use eod to represent finite streams … Continue reading →

As I’ve already explained, Lucid can be understood as functional programming with an added time dimension. What about other dimensions? In particular, what about a space dimension? The late Ed Ashcroft and I discovered this possibility when we tried to … Continue reading →

And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitudes. So they all ate and were filled, and … Continue reading →

The Liar Paradox is simple enough to explain – is the following statement true or false? This statement is false. If it’s true then it’s false, but if it’s false then it’s true  … nothing works. In my not-so-humble opinion, … Continue reading →