Papers › Seven Sketches in Compositionality: An Invitation to Applied Category Theory

Seven Sketches in Compositionality: An Invitation to Applied Category Theory

14 Mar 2018arXiv:1803.05316links table onlyarchive 2025-07-28

Brendan Fong, David I Spivak

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This book is an invitation to discover advanced topics in category theory through concrete, real-world examples. It aims to give a tour: a gentle, quick introduction to guide later exploration. The tour takes place over seven sketches, each pairing an evocative application, such as databases, electric circuits, or dynamical systems, with the exploration of a categorical structure, such as adjoint functors, enriched categories, or toposes. No prior knowledge of category theory is assumed. A feedback form for typos, comments, questions, and suggestions is available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/160G9OFcP5DWT8Stn7TxdVx83DJnnf7d5GML0_FOD5Wg/edit

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