Universita` degli Studi di Udine Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica Dottorato di Ricerca in Informatica XXIV Ciclo - Anno Accademico 2011-2012 Ph.D. Thesis Sets as Graphs Candidate: Supervisors: Alexandru Ioan Tomescu Alberto Policriti Eugenio G. Omodeo December 2011 Tesi di dottorato di Alexandru Ioan Tomescu, discussa presso l'Universit`adegli Studi di Udine Author's e-mail:
[email protected] Author's address: Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica Universit`adegli Studi di Udine Via delle Scienze, 206 33100 Udine Italia Tesi di dottorato di Alexandru Ioan Tomescu, discussa presso l'Universit`adegli Studi di Udine To my parents Tesi di dottorato di Alexandru Ioan Tomescu, discussa presso l'Universit`adegli Studi di Udine Tesi di dottorato di Alexandru Ioan Tomescu, discussa presso l'Universit`adegli Studi di Udine Abstract In set theory and formal logic, a set is generally an object containing nothing but other sets as elements. Not only sets enable uniformity in the formalization of the whole of mathematics, but their ease-of-use and conciseness are employed to represent information in some computer languages. Given the intrinsic nesting property of sets, it is natural to represent them as directed graphs: vertices will stand for sets, while the arc relation will mimic the membership relation. This switch of perspective is important: from a computational point of view, this led to many decidability results, while from a logical point of view, this allowed for natural extensions of the concept of set, such as that of hyperset. Interpreting a set as a directed graph gives rise to many combinatorial, structural and computational questions, having as unifying goal that of a transfer of results and techniques across the two areas.