Formal specifications are an important tool for the construction, verification and analysis of systems, since without it is hardly possible to explain whether a system worked correctly or showed an expected behavior. This book proposes the use of representation theorems as a means to develop an understanding of all models of a specification in order to exclude possible unintended models, demonstrating the general methodology with representation theorems for applications in qualitative spatial reasoning, data stream processing, and belief revision. For qualitative spatial reasoning, it develops a model of spatial relatedness that captures the scaling context with hierarchical partitions of a spatial domain, and axiomatically characterizes the resulting relations. It also shows that various important properties of stream processing, such as prefix-determinedness or various factorization properties can be axiomatized, and that the axioms are fulfilled by natural classes of stream functions. The third example is belief revision, which is concerned with the revision of knowledge bases under new, potentially incompatible information. In this context, the book considers a subclass of revision operators, namely the class of reinterpretation operators, and characterizes them axiomatically. A characteristic property of reinterpretation operators is that of dissolving potential inconsistencies by reinterpreting symbols of the knowledge base. Intended for researchers in theoretical computer science or one of the above application domains, the book presents results that demonstrate the use of representation theorems for the design and evaluation of formal specifications, and provide the basis for future application-development kits that support application designers with automatically built representations.

All Symmetric and Intuitionistic Algebras are represented by Symmetric or Intuitionistic Algebras of classical sets obtaining, as a corollary, the Bialynicki-Birula and Rasiowa's theorem for De Morgan Algebras.

A fundamental reason for using formal methods in the philosophy of science is the desirability of having a fixed frame of reference that may be used to organize the variety of doctrines at hand. This book—Patrick Suppes's major work, and the result of several decades of research—examines how set-theoretical methods provide such a framework, covering issues of axiomatic method, representation, invariance, probability, mechanics, and language, including research on brain-wave representations of words and sentences. This is a groundbreaking, essential text from a distinguished philosopher.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed joint postproceedings of the 8th International Seminar on Relational Methods in Computer Science, the 3rd International Workshop on Applications of Kleene Algebra, and the Workshop of COST Action 274. The 17 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited papers address foundational and methodological aspects of the calculi of relations and Kleene algebra, and their application in various areas of computer science and information processing.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Relational and Algebraic Methods in Computer Science, RAMiCS 13, held in Cambridge, UK, in September 2012. The 23 revised full papers presented were carefully selected from 39 submissions in the general area of relational and algebraic methods in computer science, adding special focus on formal methods for software engineering, logics of programs and links with neighboring disciplines. The papers are structured in specific fields on applications to software specification and correctness, mechanized reasoning in relational algebras, algebraic program derivation, theoretical foundations, relations and algorithms, and properties of specialized relations.