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John Baez (University of Edinburgh, U. C. Riverside)
Friday 31 October 2025, 14:00-15:00
Cospans of finite sets
- 👤 Speaker: John Baez (University of Edinburgh, U. C. Riverside)
- 📅 Date & Time: Friday 31 October 2025, 14:00 - 15:00
- 📍 Venue: SS03, Computer Laboratory
Questions? Contact
Ioannis Markakis
Abstract
Cospans of finite sets are the morphisms in a bicategory, not really a category, because composition of cospans is associative only up to natural isomorphism. How can we characterize this bicategory abstractly? There’s a category of finite sets and isomorphism classes of cospans, and Steve Lack gave a beautiful characterization of this, which I will explain. But what about the bicategory? I will state a guess that I haven’t proved.
Series This talk is part of the Logic and Semantics Seminar (Computer Laboratory) series.
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