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Weakly Markov Categories and Weakly Affine Monads

Authors Tobias Fritz, Fabio Gadducci , Paolo Perrone , Davide Trotta

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Author Details

Tobias Fritz
  • Department of Mathematics, Universität Innsbruck, Austria
Fabio Gadducci
  • Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa, Italy
Paolo Perrone
  • Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, UK
Davide Trotta
  • Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa, Italy

Funding

  • Fritz, Tobias: FWF P 35992-N.
  • Gadducci, Fabio: MIUR PRIN 2017FTXR "IT-MaTTerS".
  • Perrone, Paolo: ERC Grant "BLaSt - A Better Language for Statistics".
  • Trotta, Davide: MIUR PRIN 2017FTXR "IT-MaTTerS".

Cite As Get BibTex

Tobias Fritz, Fabio Gadducci, Paolo Perrone, and Davide Trotta. Weakly Markov Categories and Weakly Affine Monads. In 10th Conference on Algebra and Coalgebra in Computer Science (CALCO 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 270, pp. 16:1-16:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.CALCO.2023.16

Abstract

Introduced in the 1990s in the context of the algebraic approach to graph rewriting, gs-monoidal categories are symmetric monoidal categories where each object is equipped with the structure of a commutative comonoid. They arise for example as Kleisli categories of commutative monads on cartesian categories, and as such they provide a general framework for effectful computation. Recently proposed in the context of categorical probability, Markov categories are gs-monoidal categories where the monoidal unit is also terminal, and they arise for example as Kleisli categories of commutative affine monads, where affine means that the monad preserves the monoidal unit.
The aim of this paper is to study a new condition on the gs-monoidal structure, resulting in the concept of weakly Markov categories, which is intermediate between gs-monoidal categories and Markov ones. In a weakly Markov category, the morphisms to the monoidal unit are not necessarily unique, but form a group. As we show, these categories exhibit a rich theory of conditional independence for morphisms, generalising the known theory for Markov categories. We also introduce the corresponding notion for commutative monads, which we call weakly affine, and for which we give two equivalent characterisations.
The paper argues that these monads are relevant to the study of categorical probability. A case at hand is the monad of finite non-zero measures, which is weakly affine but not affine. Such structures allow to investigate probability without normalisation within an elegant categorical framework.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Models of computation
Keywords
  • String diagrams
  • gs-monoidal and Markov categories
  • categorical probability
  • affine monads

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