Author Archives: Bill Wadge

About Bill Wadge

I am a retired Professor in Computer Science at UVic.

Logic without Bound Variables [230 views]

Posted on March 1, 2017 by Bill Wadge

I’ve already described the relatively simple Monadic Hybrid Calculus that allows you to say simple things formally without bound variables. For example, sG may mean “Socrates is Greek”, [G]M “all Greeks are Mortal”, and the conclusion “Socrates is Mortal”, sM. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

My Video Career [1500 views]

Posted on March 16, 2016 by Bill Wadge

A while back I decided that it would easy and useful to video record some lectures. Little did I know!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Al-Khwarizmi Schmal-Khwarizmi [660 views]

Posted on January 30, 2016 by Bill Wadge

I like true/false exam questions and through my career have thought up hundreds of them. Every now and then, for comic relief and to inflate the grades, I include some that are ridiculously easy. However, I’ve never found one that … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Extensional Higher Order Prolog [3200 views]

Posted on January 18, 2016 by Bill Wadge

One big issue in the logic programming vs functional programming debate is logic programming’s (or at least the original Prolog’s) restriction to first order logic. To functional programmers this constraint is intolerable; even the simplest Haskell programs are higher order … Continue reading →

Posted in research | 4 Comments

Nuclear Pedagogy [1300 views]

Posted on January 13, 2016 by Bill Wadge

This a followup on Wadge’s Law Every Computer Science course has a tendency to degenerate into a programming course. This just begs to be generalized. What about programming courses? Do they degenerate? To what? For example, according to language teachers … Continue reading →

Posted in musings | 1 Comment

B before A [2500 views]

Posted on January 8, 2016 by Bill Wadge

Remember this Wadge’s Law Whenever you want to do something, there’s always someone who says there’s something else you have to do first. Call the thing you want to do A, the thing you’ve been told you have to do … Continue reading →

Posted in musings | 1 Comment

Department of Redundancy Department [1800 views]

Posted on December 16, 2015 by Bill Wadge

If you ever took an English course. you learned that “redundancy” is a bad thing. It means useless, wasted repetition. If you live in the UK you dread being made “redundant” because it means your boss has no use for you … Continue reading →

Posted in musings | Leave a comment

Wadge Degrees [1200 views]

Posted on November 30, 2015 by Bill Wadge

When I was a young grad student at UC Berkeley, I invented what are now called “Wadge degrees”. Not to mention “Wadge reducibility”, “Wadge games”, “Wadge’s Lemma” and the “Wadge hierarchy” (there’s a Wikipedia entry on the latter). “So”, I … Continue reading →

Posted in research | 2 Comments

Lucid Meets Prolog [1900 views]

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Bill Wadge

I remember when, a long time ago, Logic Programming was just starting out. The logic programmers would go to the functional programming gatherings and hang around the sidelines, hoping to convince everyone that logic programming was a kind of functional … Continue reading →

Posted in research | 1 Comment

Laws of the Universe and Teaching

Posted on October 28, 2015 by Bill Wadge

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 →