Book review "The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming"

TL;DR

This book review discusses a textbook that uses Haskell to teach logic and mathematics, emphasizing executable, strongly typed representations and reasoning about programs in a systematic, engaging manner.

Contribution

It highlights a systematic approach to teaching logic and mathematics through Haskell, integrating definitions, examples, and reasoning about programs.

Findings

Uses Haskell for mathematical notions and logic

Provides a systematic, engaging mathematical style

Focuses on reasoning about programs

Abstract

The textbook by Doets and van Eijck puts the Haskell programming language systematically to work for presenting a major piece of logic and mathematics. The reader is taken through chapters on basic logic, proof recipes, sets and lists, relations and functions, recursion and co-recursion, the number systems, polynomials and power series, ending with Cantor's infinities. The book uses Haskell for the executable and strongly typed manifestation of various mathematical notions at the level of declarative programming. The book adopts a systematic but relaxed mathematical style (definition, example, exercise, ...); the text is very pleasant to read due to a small amount of anecdotal information, and due to the fact that definitions are fluently integrated in the running text. An important goal of the book is to get the reader acquainted with reasoning about programs.