A Minkowski type duality mediating between state and predicate transformer semantics for a probabilistic nondeterministic language

Abstract In this paper we systematically derive a predicate transformer semantics from a direct semantics for a simple probabilistic-nondeterministic programming language L p . This goal is achieved by exhibiting the direct semantics as isomorphic to a continuation semantics from which the predicate transformer semantics can be read off immediately. This isomorphism allows one to identify nonempty convex compact saturated sets of valuations on the set S of states with certain “good” functionals from I S to I in a way similar to the one how H. Minkowski in 1903 related nonempty convex compact subsets of R n to what is nowadays called Minkowski functionals.

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