Re: Categories in real world applications

[Giorgio Mossa <mossa@poisson.phc.unipi.it>]

Well in my limited knowledge I can say that a lot of category theory had been
employed in order to design many constructions for programming languages.

For instance in Haskell the notion of category, functor and monads
are used as typeclasses in order to abstract some general pattern
lurking around in many parametric types.
So from this perspective category theory gives to (real world) programmers
some tools to produce abstract-reusable-patterns, to code and avoid boilerplate.

There is also Spivak's program to treat database categorically: yeah I know
this is research, nonetheless it has to do with modelling real world objects
(database) and modelling data is part (if not the essence) of real world application
of mathematics.

There are also other researcher that are trying to find categorical models for real
world objects (see Baez's work for instance). I don't know if these works are yet
ready for real world applications, but they seems promising.

Hope this helps.

On Tue, Feb 02, 2016 at 07:10:09AM +0200, Patrik Eklund wrote:
> If you know of any real world applications of category theory, please
> let me know. I would be interested to know of clearly described
> applications rather that anticipated ones using categories in background
> theories.
>
> When we speak about "applications of categories" or "applied categories"
> we mostly or almost exclusively mean applying categories within
> mathematics (or theoretical computer science), where we have categories
> in algebra, topology, logic (and type theory), and so on. We do have
> real world applications of algebra, topology, logic, and many other
> branches of mathematics, but possible use of categories is then hidden
> and/or indirect.
>
> Therefore the question: Are categories applicable in the real world?
>
> Application areas could be found within the public or private sectors.
> In the public sector it can be e.g. within education and health, and in
> the private sector in can be e.g. within energy, finance and
> manufacturing.
>
> If I receive more than just a few replies, I will make a survey of it,
> and later on inform the mailing list about the survey.
>
> Looking forward.
>
> Best,
>
> Patrik
>
>
>
> --
> Prof. Patrik Eklund
> Ume?? University
> Department of Computing Science
> SE-90187 Ume??
> Sweden
>
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