Computer-Aided Modelling and Reasoning

Overview

Lecturers: Dr. Andreas Lochbihler and Dr. Christoph Sprenger

Classes: Tuesday 9-13h, in CHN D 48

Credits: 8 ECTS
All participating students will take part in a longer-term project. The final grade will be composed as follows: 60% exam and 40% project work. Computer-based exam as a session examination.

Language: English

Announcements

• Please install external page Isabelle 2015 on your laptop before the first class and bring your laptop to the first class if possible.

Description

This lab is a hands-on course about using an interactive theorem prover to construct formal models of algorithms, protocols, and programming languages and to reason about their properties. The focus is on applying logical methods to concrete problems supported by a theorem prover. The course will demonstrate the challenges of formal rigor, but also the benefits of machine support in modelling, proving and validating.
The lab will have two parts: The first introduces basic and advanced modelling techniques (functional programs, inductive definitions, modules) and the associated proof techniques (term rewriting, resolution, induction, proof automation). In the second, the students work in teams of 2-3 on a project in which they apply these techniques to a given topic: they build a formal model and prove its desired properties. The topic will be taken from the area of programming languages, model checking, or information security.

Objectives

The students learn to effectively use a theorem prover to create unambiguous models and rigorously analyse them. They learn how to write precise and concise specifications and to exploit the proof assistant as a tool for checking and analysing such models and for taming their complexity.

Requirements

No formal requirements, but the following are recommended

• functional programming and logics (as taught in FMFP)
• participation (you must be willing to participate in the labs and get your hands dirty with a proof assistant)

Resources

• external page Isabelle theorem prover and external page documentation (also available from within Isabelle)
• Textbook: Tobias Nipkow, Gerwin Klein. external page Concrete Semantics, part 1
• Isabelle community support: and on external page stack overflow