How to define unspecified constants in Coq - coq

My question is how to define unspecified constants in Coq.
To make clear what I mean, assume the following toy system:
I want to define a function
f:nat->nat, which has the value 0 at all but one place w, where it has the value 1.
The place w shall be a parameter of the system.
All proofs of the system can assume that w is fixed but arbitrary.
My idea was to introduce
Parameter w:nat.
But I get stuck by defining f(x), because I don't have a clue how to match x with a.
What would be the right way to handle this?
Or, is it the wrong way using w as a Parameter?
(This is NOT a homework question)

This is how I'd do it:
Require Import Arith.
Parameter w : nat.
Definition f (n : nat) := if beq_nat n w then 1 else 0.
When proving properties about f you can then use lemmas specifying that beq_nat n w is indeed deciding whether n = w. You can find them by using e.g.
SearchAbout beq_nat.

Related

Is there any way to rewrite the function in "is_lim"?

I'm using Coq and Coquelicot Library, and I'd like to know a better way to handle limit easily.
When I want to prove \lim_{x \to 1} (x^2-1)/(x-1) = 2, I code as follows.
Require Import Reals Lra.
From mathcomp Require Import all_ssreflect.
From Coquelicot Require Import Coquelicot.
Lemma lim_1_2 : is_lim (fun x:R => (x^2 - 1)/(x - 1)) 1 2.
Proof.
apply (is_lim_ext_loc (fun x:R => x + 1)).
- rewrite /Rbar_locally' /locally' /within /locally.
exists (mkposreal 1 Rlt_0_1).
move => y Hyball Hyneq1.
field; lra.
- apply is_lim_plus'; [apply is_lim_id | apply is_lim_const].
Qed.
In this example, I explicitly write the goal term (fun x:R => x + 1). Is there any way to transform (fun x:R => (x^2 - 1)/(x - 1)) to (fun x:R => x + 1) like rewrite tactic? In other words, I'm looking for a similar tactic as under for eq_big_nat.
Coquelicot is optimized for ease of use and uses total functions rather than dependent restrictions wherever possible - e.g. you can write down an integral without having a prove that it exists, but as far as I know this does not extend to division by zero. To make your above equation work, one would need a definition of division, which somehow can handle the 0/0 you get for x=1. One can define a division for functions (polynomials) which can handle this in a reasonable way - and this is what you are using implicitly by stating that this makes sense, but one cannot define division for individual real numbers which can handle 0/0 in the way you would like. But the division operator you use above is a division on individual numbers and not on polynomials. In informal mathematics one is sometimes a bit sloppy about such things.
Besides the 0/0 issue, you also would have to use the axiom of functional extensionality, which states that two functions are equal in case they are equal for each point.
Here is a snippet of Coq which shows what one can be done and where the issues are :
Require Import Reals.
Require Import Lra.
Require Import FunctionalExtensionality.
Open Scope R.
Definition dom := {x : R | x<>1}.
Definition dom2R (x : dom) : R := proj1_sig x.
Coercion dom2R : dom >-> R.
Example Example:
(fun x : dom => (x^2 - 1)/(x - 1))
= (fun x : dom => x + 1).
Proof.
apply functional_extensionality.
intros [x xH].
cbv.
field.
lra.
Qed.
All in all it is not that bad with the implicit coercion from dom to Real, although the function is in reality more complicated than it looks since each x is an implicit coercion projecting from dom to R.
Also one could have an axiom of functional extensionality, which works if the domain of one function is a subset of the domain of the other function. I am not sure if this would be consistent, though and it would also require a non standard definition of equality because with the usual equality only things of the same type can be equal. This would allow you to equate the polynomial fraction with the polynomial on the full R.
I hope this explains why things are as they are. Coquelicot relies on the division operator from the standard library, for which you can't prove anything in case the denominator is zero. This is sometimes inconvenient, but to my knowledge (which is not very extensive - I am physicist not mathematician) up to now nobody came up with a definition of division which allows you to easily do what you want.

exact value of the derivative on Coq

I want to represent the exact value of the derivative.
I can calculate an approximation like this.
Require Import Coq.Reals.Reals.
Open Scope R_scope.
Definition QuadraticFunction (x:R) := x^2.
Definition differentiation (x:R)(I:R -> R):=
let h := 0.000000001 in
((I (x+h)) - (I x)) / h.
But, we can not calculate the exact value of the derivative on the computer.
For that reason, I want to represent the exact value with the inductive type or others somehow.
I know D_in of Reals.Rderiv, which returns Prop.
I need your help. Thank you.
I need to make four remarks
You should look at coquelicot, this is an extension library on top of Reals that has a nicer treatment of derivatives.
There is no inductive type involved in the presentation of real numbers. In fact, it is part of theoretical folklore that real numbers cannot be represented as an inductive type, in the sense that we usually mean. In an inductive type, you can usually compare two elements by a finite computation. In real numbers, such a comparison faces the difficulty that some numbers are defined by a process of infinite refinement. One of the foundations of the real numbers is that the set is complete, meaning that every Cauchy sequence has a limit. This is often used as a way to define new real numbers.
what does it mean to calculate a number? How do you calculate PI (the circle ratio). You cannot return 3.14, because it is not the exact value. So you need to keep PI as the result. But why would PI be better than (4 * atan(1)), or
lim(4 - 4/3 + 4/5 - 4/7 ...)? So, you do not calculate real numbers as you would do with pocket calculators, because you need to keep the precision. The best you can do, is to return an exact representation as rational value when the real number is rational, an "understandable symbolic expression", or an interval approximation. But interval approximations are not exact, and understandable symbolic expression is an ambiguous specification. How do you choose which expression is most understandable?
There is no function that takes an arbitrary function and returns its derivative in a point as a real number, because we have to take into account that some functions are not derivable everywhere. The Reals library does have a function that makes it possible to talk about the value of a derivative for a derivable function. This is called derive.
Here is a script that does the whole process.
Require Import Coq.Reals.Reals.
Require Import Coq.Reals.Reals.
Open Scope R_scope.
Definition QuadraticFunction (x:R) := x^2.
Lemma derivable_qf : derivable QuadraticFunction.
Proof.
now repeat apply derivable_mult;
(apply derivable_id || apply derivable_const).
Qed.
Definition QuadraticFunctionDerivative :=
derive QuadraticFunction derivable_qf.
Now you have a name for the derivative function, and you can even show that it is equal to another simple function. But whether this other simple function is the result of calculating the derivative is subjective. Here is an example using just the Reals library, but using Coquelicot would give a much more concise script (because derivative computation can be automated, interested readers should also look at the answer by #larsr to the same question).
Lemma QuadraticFunctionDerivativeSimple (x : R) :
QuadraticFunctionDerivative x = 2 * x.
Proof.
unfold QuadraticFunctionDerivative, derive, QuadraticFunction; simpl.
rewrite derive_pt_eq.
replace (2 * x) with (1 * (x * 1) + x * (1 * 1 + x * 0)) by ring.
apply (derivable_pt_lim_mult (fun x => x) (fun x => x * 1)).
apply derivable_pt_lim_id.
apply (derivable_pt_lim_mult (fun x => x) (fun x => 1)).
apply derivable_pt_lim_id.
apply derivable_pt_lim_const.
Qed.
This is probably not the best way to solve the problem, but it is the one I came up with after thinking about the problem for a few minutes.
I recommend #Yves' thoughtful answer, and also want to recommend Coquelicot because of its very readable formalisation of Real Analysis.
Coquelicot has a theorem for the derivative of (f x) ^ n, and in your case f = id (the identity function) and n = 2, so using Coquelicot's theorem, you could prove your lemma like this:
From Coquelicot Require Import Coquelicot.
Require Import Reals.
Open Scope R.
Goal forall x, is_derive (fun x => x^2) x (2*x).
intros x.
evar (e:R). replace (2*x) with e.
apply is_derive_pow.
apply is_derive_id.
unfold e, one. simpl. ring.
Qed.
Coquelicot separates the proof that the derivative exists (is_derive) from a function (Derive) that "computes" the derivative, and has a theorem showing that Derive gives the right answer if the derivative exists.
is_derive_unique: is_derive f x l -> Derive f x = l
This makes it much easier to work with derivatives in expressions with rewrite that using the formulation in the standard library. Just do the rewrites, and the proofs that the derivative really exists ends up as side-conditions.
(Note that I used evars above. It is useful to do that if you want to be able to apply a theorem, but the expressions are not "obviously" (i.e. computationally) equal to Coq. I for similar reasons find it useful to do eapply is_derive_ext to do rewrites inside the function that is being worked on. Just a hint...)
Also, Coquelicot has some useful tactics that can automate some of the reasoning. For example:
Lemma Derive_x3_plus_cos x: Derive (fun x => x^3 + cos x) x = 3*(x^2) - sin x.
apply is_derive_unique.
auto_derive; auto; ring.
Qed.

Definition by property in coq

I am having trouble with formalizing definitions of the following form: define an integer such that some property holds.
Let's say that I formalized the definition of the property:
Definition IsGood (x : Z) : Prop := ...
Now I need a definition of the form:
Definition Good : Z := ...
assuming that I proved that an integer with the property exists and is unique:
Lemma Lemma_GoodExistsUnique : exists! (x : Z), IsGood x.
Is there an easy way of defining Good using IsGood and Lemma_GoodExistsUnique?
Since, the property is defined on integer numbers, it seems that no additional axioms should be necessary. In any event, I don't see how adding something like the axiom of choice can help with the definition.
Also, I am having trouble with formalizing definitions of the following form (I suspect this is related to the problem I described above, but please indicate if that is not the case): for every x, there exists y, and these y are different for different x. Like, for example, how to define that there are N distinct good integer numbers using IsGood:
Definition ThereAreNGoodIntegers (N : Z) (IsGood : Z -> Prop) := ...?
In real-world mathematics, definitions like that occur every now and again, so this should not be difficult to formalize if Coq is intended to be suitable for practical mathematics.
The short answer to your first question is: in general, it is not possible, but in your particular case, yes.
In Coq's theory, propositions (i.e., Props) and their proofs have a very special status. In particular, it is in general not possible to write a choice operator that extracts the witness of an existence proof. This is done to make the theory compatible with certain axioms and principles, such as proof irrelevance, which says that all proofs of a given proposition are equal to each other. If you want to be able to do this, you need to add this choice operator as an additional axiom to your theory, as in the standard library.
However, in certain particular cases, it is possible to extract a witness out of an abstract existence proof without recurring to any additional axioms. In particular, it is possible to do this for countable types (such as Z) when the property in question is decidable. You can for instance use the choiceType interface in the Ssreflect library to get exactly what you want (look for the xchoose function).
That being said, I would usually advice against doing things in this style, because it leads to unnecessary complexity. It is probably easier to define Good directly, without resorting to the existence proof, and then prove separately that Good has the sought property.
Definition Good : Z := (* ... *)
Definition IsGood (z : Z) : Prop := (* ... *)
Lemma GoodIsGood : IsGood Good.
Proof. (* ... *) Qed.
Lemma GoodUnique : forall z : Z, IsGood z -> z = Good.
If you absolutely want to define Good with an existence proof, you can also change the proof of Lemma_GoodExistsUnique to use a connective in Type instead of Prop, since it allows you to extract the witness directly using the proj1_sig function:
Lemma Lemma_GoodExistsUnique : {z : Z | Good z /\ forall z', Good z' -> z' = z}.
Proof. (* ... *) Qed.
As for your second question, yes, it is a bit related to the first point. Once again, I would recommend that you write down a function y_from_x with type Z -> Z that will compute y given x, and then prove separately that this function relates inputs and outputs in a particular way. Then, you can say that the ys are different for different xs by proving that y_from_x is injective.
On the other hand, I'm not sure how your last example relates to this second question. If I understand what you want to do correctly, you can write something like
Definition ThereAreNGoodIntegers (N : Z) (IsGood : Z -> Prop) :=
exists zs : list Z,
Z.of_nat (length zs) = N
/\ NoDup zs
/\ Forall IsGood zs.
Here, Z.of_nat : nat -> Z is the canonical injection from naturals to integers, NoDup is a predicate asserting that a list doesn't contain repeated elements, and Forall is a higher-order predicate asserting that a given predicate (in this case, IsGood) holds of all elements of a list.
As a final note, I would advice against using Z for things that can only involve natural numbers. In your example, your using an integer to talk about the cardinality of a set, and this number is always a natural number.

What forms of goal in Coq are considered to be "true"?

When I prove some theorem, my goal evolves as I apply more and more tactics. Generally speaking the goal tends to split into sub goals, where the subgoals are more simple. At some final point Coq decides that the goal is proven. How this "proven" goal may look like? These goals seems to be fine:
a = a. (* Any object is identical to itself (?) *)
myFunc x y = myFunc x y. (* Result of the same function with the same params
is always the same (?) *)
What else can be here or can it be that examples are fundamentally wrong?
In other words, when I finally apply reflexivity, Coq just says ** Got it ** without any explanation. Is there any way to get more details on what it actually did or why it decided that the goal is proven?
You're actually facing a very general notion that seems not so general because Coq has some user-friendly facility for reasoning with equality in particular.
In general, Coq accepts a goal as solved as soon as it receives a term whose type is the type of the goal: it has been convinced the proposition is true because it has been convinced the type that this proposition describes is inhabited, and what convinced it is the actual witness you helped build along your proof.
For the particular case of inductive datatypes, the two ways you are going to be able to proved the proposition P a b c are:
by constructing a term of type P a b c, using the constructors of the inductive type P, and providing all the necessary arguments.
or by reusing an existing proof or an axiom in the environment whose type you can get to match P a b c.
For the even more particular case of equality proofs (equality is just an inductive datatype in Coq), the same two ways I list above degenerate to this:
the only constructor of equality is eq_refl, and to apply it you need to show that the two sides are judgementally equal. For most purposes, this corresponds to goals that look like T a b c = T a b c, but it is actually a slightly more broad notion of equality (see below). For these, all you have to do is apply the eq_refl constructor. In a nutshell, that is what reflexivity does!
the second case consists in proving that the equality holds because you have other equalities in your context, nothing special here.
Now one part of your question was: when does Coq accept that two sides of an equality are equal by reflexivity?
If I am not mistaken, the answer is when the two sides of the equality are αβδιζ-convertible.
What this grossly means is that there is a way to make them syntactically equal by repeated applications of:
α : sane renaming of non-free variables
β : computing reducible expressions
δ : unfolding definitions
ι : simplifying matches
ζ : expanding let-bound expressions
[someone please correct me if more rules apply or if I got one wrong]
For instance some of the things that are not captured by these rules are:
equality of functions that do more or less the same thing in different ways:
(fun x => 0 + x) = (fun x => x + 0)
quicksort = mergesort
equality of terms that are stuck reducing but would be equal:
forall n, 0 + n = n + 0

Subset parameter

I have a set as a parameter:
Parameter Q:Set.
Now I want to define another parameter that is a subset of Q. Something like:
Parameter F: subset Q.
How I can define that? I guess I can add the restriction later as an axiom, but seems more natural to express it directly in the type of F.
You can't express it directly.
It's misleading to think of objects in Set as mathematical sets. Set is the sort of datatypes, the same kinds of types that you find in programming languages (except that Coq's types are very powerful).
Coq doesn't have subtyping¹. If the two types F and Q are distinct, then they are disjoint, as far as the mathematical model is concerned.
The usual approach is to declare F as a completely related set, and declare a canonical injection from F to Q. You'll want to specify any interesting property of that injection, beyond the obvious.
Parameter Q : Set.
Parameter F : Set.
Parameter inj_F_Q : F -> Q.
Axiom inj_F_Q_inj : forall x y : F, inj_F_Q x = inj_F_Q y -> x = y.
Coercion inj_F_Q : F >-> Q.
That last line declares a coercion from F to Q. That lets you put an object of type F wherever the context requires the type Q. The type inference engine will insert a call to inj_F_Q. You will need to write the coercion explicitly occasionally, since the type inference engine, while very good, is not perfect (perfection would be mathematically impossible). There is a chapter on coercions in the Coq reference manual; you should at least skim through it.
Another approach is to define your subset with an extensional property, i.e. declare a predicate P on the set (the type) Q and define F from P.
Parameter Q : Set.
Parameter P : Q -> Prop.
Definition G := sig P.
Definition inj_G_Q : G -> Q := #proj1_sig Q P.
Coercion inj_G_Q : G >-> Q.
sig is a specification, i.e. a weak sum type, i.e. a pair consisting of an object and a proof that said object has a certain property. sig P is eta-equivalent to {x | P x} (which is syntactic sugar sig (fun x => P x)). You have to decide whether you prefer the short or the long form (you need to be consistent). The Program vernacular is often useful when working with weak sums.
¹
There is subtyping in the module language, but that's not relevant here. And coercions fake subtyping well enough for many uses, but they're not the real thing.