Hello,


More philosophy about Markov chains and invariants and Petri nets..

I am also working with Petri Nets and Markov chains in mathematics and structural analysis of Petri nets in mathematics, so i will
talk about it now:

About Markov chains in mathematics and more..

In mathematics, many Markov chains automatically find their own way to
an equilibrium distribution as the chain wanders through time. This
happens for many Markov chains, but not all. I will talk about the
conditions required for the chain to find its way to an equilibrium distribution.

If in mathematics we give a Markov chain on a finite state space and
asks if it converges to an equilibrium distribution as t goes to
infinity. An equilibrium distribution will always exist for a finite
state space. But you need to check whether the chain is irreducible and aperiodic. If so, it will converge to equilibrium. If the chain is
irreducible but periodic, it cannot converge to an equilibrium
distribution that is independent of start state. If the chain is
reducible, it may or may not converge.

So i will give an example:

Suppose that for the course you are currently taking there are two
volumes on the market and represent them by A and B. Suppose further
that the probability that a teacher using volume A keeps the same volume
next year is 0.4 and the probability that it will change for volume B
is 0.6. Furthermore the probability that a professor using B this
year changes to next year for A is 0.2 and the probability that it
again uses volume B is 0.8. We notice that the matrix of transition is:

| 0.4 0.6 |
| |
| 0.2 0.8 |

The interesting question for any businessman is whether his
market share will stabilize over time. In other words, does it exist
a probability vector (t1, t2) such that:

(t1, t2) * (transition matrix above) = (t1, t2) [1]

So notice that the transition matrix above is irreducible and aperiodic,
so it will converge to an equilibrum distribution that is (t1, t2) that
i will mathematically find, so the system of equations of [1] above is:

0.4 * t1 + 0.2 * t2 = t1
0.6 * t1 + 0.8 * t2 = t2

this gives:

-0.6 * t1 + 0.2 * t2 = 0
0.6 * t1 - 0.2 * t2 = 0

But we know that (t1, t2) is a vector of probability, so we have:

t1 + t2 = 1

So we have to solve the following system of equations:

t1 + t2 = 1
0.6 * t1 - 0.2 * t2 = 0

So i have just solved it with R, and this gives the vector:

(0.25,0.75)

Which means that in the long term, volume A will grab 25% of the market
while volume B will grab 75% of the market unless the advertising
campaign does change the probabilities of transition.

So notice that in my previous post i have talked about invariants of the system, here is my previous post read it carefully:

About Turing completeness and parallel programming..

You have to know that a Turing-complete system can be proven
mathematically to be capable of performing any possible calculation or
computer program.

So now you are understanding what is the power of "expressiveness" that
is Turing-complete.

For example i am working with the Tool that is called "Tina"(read about
it below), it is a powerful tool that permits to work on Petri nets and
be able to know about the boundedness and liveness of Petri nets, for
example Tina supports Timed Petri nets that are Turing-complete , so the
power of there expressiveness is Turing-complete, but i think this level
of expressiveness is good for parallel programming and such, but
it is not an efficient high level expressiveness. But still Petri nets
are good for parallel programming.

About deadlocks and race conditions in parallel programming..

I have just read the following paper:

Deadlock Avoidance in Parallel Programs with Futures

https://cogumbreiro.github.io/assets/cogumbreiro-gorn.pdf

So as you are noticing you can have deadlocks in parallel programming
by introducing circular dependencies among tasks waiting on future
values or you can have deadlocks by introducing circular dependencies
among tasks waiting on windows event objects or such synchronisation
objects, so you have to have a general tool that detects deadlocks, but
if you are noticing that the tool called Valgrind for C++ can detect
deadlocks only happening from Pthread locks , read the following to
notice it:

http://valgrind.org/docs/manual/hg-manual.html#hg-manual.lock-orders

So this is not good, so you have to have a general way that permits
to detect deadlocks on locks , mutexes, and deadlocks from introducing
circular dependencies among tasks waiting on future values or deadlocks
you may have deadlocks by introducing circular dependencies among tasks
waiting on windows event objects or such synchronisation objects etc.
this is why i have talked before about this general way that detects
deadlocks, and here it is, read about it in my following thoughts:

Yet more precision about the invariants of a system..

I was just thinking about Petri nets , and i have studied more Petri
nets, they are useful for parallel programming, and what i have noticed
by studying them, is that there is two methods to prove that there is no deadlock in the system, there is the structural analysis with place
invariants that you have to mathematically find, or you can use the reachability tree, but we have to notice that the structural analysis of
Petri nets learns you more, because it permits you to prove that there
is no deadlock in the system, and the place invariants are
mathematically calculated by the following system of the given
Petri net:

Transpose(vector) * Incidence matrix = 0

So you apply the Gaussian Elimination or the Farkas algorithm to the
incidence matrix to find the Place invariants, and as you will notice
those place invariants calculations of the Petri nets look like Markov
chains in mathematics, with there vector of probabilities and there
transition matrix of probabilities, and you can, using Markov chains mathematically calculate where the vector of probabilities
will "stabilize", and it gives you a very important information, and you
can do it by solving the following mathematical system:

Unknown vector1 of probabilities * transition matrix of probabilities =
Unknown vector1 of probabilities.

Solving this system of equations is very important in economics and
other fields, and you can notice that it is like calculating the
invariants , because the invariant in the system above is the vector1 of probabilities that is obtained, and this invariant, like in the
invariants of the structural analysis of Petri nets, gives
you a very important information about the system, like where market
shares will stabilize that is calculated this way in economics. About reachability analysis of a Petri net.. As you have noticed in my Petri
nets tutorial example (read below), i am analysing the liveness of the
Petri net, because there is a rule that says:

If a Petri net is live, that means that it is deadlock-free.

Because reachability analysis of a Petri net with Tina gives you the
necessary information about boundedness and liveness of the Petri net.
So if it gives you that the Petri net is "live" , so there is no
deadlock in it.

Tina and Partial order reduction techniques..

With the advancement of computer technology, highly concurrent systems
are being developed. The verification of such systems is a challenging
task, as their state space grows exponentially with the number of processes.

Partial order reduction is an effective technique to address this
problem. It relies on the observation that the effect of executing
transitions concurrently is often independent of their ordering.

Tina is using “partial-order” reduction techniques aimed at preventing combinatorial explosion, read more here to notice it:

http://projects.laas.fr/tina/papers/qest06.pdf

About modelizations and detection of race conditions and deadlocks in
parallel programming..

I have just taken further a look at the following project in Delphi
called DelphiConcurrent by an engineer called Moualek Adlene from France:

https://github.com/moualek-adlene/DelphiConcurrent/blob/master/DelphiConcurrent.pas

And i have just taken a look at the following webpage of Dr Dobb's journal:

Detecting Deadlocks in C++ Using a Locks Monitor

https://www.drdobbs.com/detecting-deadlocks-in-c-using-a-locks-m/184416644

And i think that both of them are using technics that are not as good as analysing deadlocks with Petri Nets in parallel applications , for
example the above two methods are only addressing locks or mutexes or reader-writer locks , but they are not addressing semaphores or event
objects and such other synchronization objects, so they are not good,
this is why i have written a tutorial that shows my methodology of
analysing and detecting deadlocks in parallel applications with Petri
Nets, my methodology is more sophisticated because it is a
generalization and it modelizes with Petri Nets the broader
range of synchronization objects, and in my tutorial i will add soon
other synchronization objects, you have to look at it, here it is:

https://sites.google.com/site/scalable68/how-to-analyse-parallel-applications-with-petri-nets

You have to get the powerful Tina software to run my Petri Net examples
inside my tutorial, here is the powerful Tina software:

http://projects.laas.fr/tina/

Also to detect race conditions in parallel programming you have to take
a look at the following new tutorial that uses the powerful Spin tool:

https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/paulmck/perfbook/perfbook.html

Here is how to install Spin Model Checker on windows:

I invite you to look at this video to learn how to install Spin model
checker and iSpin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGzmtWi4Oq0

I have installed them and configured them correctly and i am working
with them in parallel programming to detect race conditions etc.

This is how you will get much more professional at detecting deadlocks
and race conditions in parallel programming.


Thank you,
Amine Moulay Ramdane.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)