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Christopher P. Porter

Publications and source records attributed to Christopher P. Porter.

21 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Trivial measures are not so trivial

Although algorithmic randomness with respect to various non-uniform computable measures is well-studied, little attention has been paid to algorithmic randomness with respect to computable \emph{trivial} measures, where a measure $μ$ on $2^ω$ is trivial if the support of $μ$ consists of a countable collection of sequences. In this article, it is shown that there is much more structure to trivial computable measures than has been previously suspected.

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Demuth's path to randomness

Osvald Demuth (1936--1988) studied constructive analysis from the viewpoint of the Russian school of constructive mathematics. In the course of his work he introduced various notions of effective null set which, when phrased in classical language, yield a number of major algorithmic randomness notions. In addition, he proved several results connecting constructive analysis and randomness that were rediscovered only much later. In this paper, we trace the path that took Demuth from his constructivist roots to his deep and innovative work on the interactions between constructive analysis, algorithmic randomness, and computability theory. We will focus specifically on (i) Demuth's work on the differentiability of Markov computable functions and his study of constructive versions of the Denjoy alternative, (ii) Demuth's independent discovery of the main notions of algorithmic randomness, as well as the development of Demuth randomness, and (iii) the interactions of truth-table reducibility, algorithmic randomness, and semigenericity in Demuth's work.

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Randomness and Semi-measures

A semi-measure is a generalization of a probability measure obtained by relaxing the additivity requirement to super-additivity. We introduce and study several randomness notions for left-c.e. semi-measures, a natural class of effectively approximable semi-measures induced by Turing functionals. Among the randomness notions we consider, the generalization of weak 2-randomness to left-c.e. semi-measures is the most compelling, as it best reflects Martin-Löf randomness with respect to a computable measure. Additionally, we analyze a question of Shen, a positive answer to which would also have yielded a reasonable randomness notion for left-c.e. semi-measures. Unfortunately though, we find a negative answer, except for some special cases.

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