School of Computing

Spider Diagrams: A Diagrammatic Reasoning System

J Howse, F Molina, J Taylor, S Kent, and J Gil

Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 12(3):182-196, June 2001.

Abstract

Spider diagrams combine and extend Venn diagrams and Euler circles to express constraints on sets and their relationships with other sets. These diagrams can be used in conjunction with object-oriented modelling notations such as the Unified Modeling Language. This paper summarises the main syntax and semantics of spider diagrams. It also introduces inference rules for reasoning with spider diagrams and a rule for combining spider diagrams. This system is shown to be sound but not complete. Disjunctive diagrams are considered as one way of enriching the system to allow combination of diagrams so that no semantic information is lost. The relationship of this system of spider diagrams to other similar systems, which are known to be sound and complete, is explored briefly.

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Bibtex Record

@article{1140,
author = {J Howse and F Molina and J Taylor and S Kent and J Gil},
title = {{Spider Diagrams: A Diagrammatic Reasoning System}},
month = {June},
year = {2001},
pages = {182-196},
keywords = {determinacy analysis, Craig interpolants},
note = {},
doi = {},
url = {http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/pubs/2001/1140},
    journal = {Journal of Visual Languages and Computing},
    publication_type = {article},
    submission_id = {11154_976795253},
    volume = {12},
    number = {3},
}

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