Open games: the long road to practical applications

Abstract:

I will talk about open games, and the closely related concepts of lenses/optics and open learners. My goal is to report on the successes and failures of an ongoing effort to try to realise the often-claimed benefits of categories and compositionality in actual practice. I will introduce what little theory is needed along the way. Here are some things I plan to talk about:

• Lenses as an abstraction of the chain rule
• Comb diagrams
• Surprising applications of open games: Bayesian inference, value function iteration
• The state of tool support
• Open games in their natural habitat: microeconomics
• Sociological aspects of working with economics