CFG Seminar: Dr. Santiago Nunez-Corrales

Can functional programming help achieve designed computational reproducibility? 

Computational reproducibility tends to be an afterthought of scientific software development. While multiple studies continue to be performed on existing software artifacts, work remains to be done along the lines of reproducibility as a designed attribute. As with any design, the concrete implementation details matter as well, since these either preserve or distort the final outcome depending on the particular choice. We will explore in this seminar how attributes and possibilities of functional programming languages –equational reasoning, higher-order functions, strict/lazy evaluation, purity, mutability, algebraic and polymorphic data types- may improve computational reproducibility when departing from a given specification. Our attention will be centered on Haskell (and Haskell-like) languages and how the relation between simple functions and implementations can be given exact meaning for various implementations. Finally, we will explore function reversibility as a property that connects to reproducibility and provenance. 

Contact Lan Li with questions.