William Angus

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About Me

Χαίρετε πάντες! I’m William (or Will or whatever you like), and I am (apparently) a Human Being.

I’ve just finished my Master’s degree in Computer Science at Oxford, and I’ll be applying for PhDs in Philosophy, Mathematics, and Computer Science soon.

I have a broad range of interests, from ancient board games to the Philosophy of AI; I have detailed them a bit more below.

In terms of my personality, I am an INFP (5w4 [4w5 9w1] sx/sp), which is probably just jargon to you.

I am very fond of music, and some of my favourite artists at the moment include Nostalghia, AURORA, Bear McCreary, Therion, and I also enjoy music from musicals, and English folk music, such as this, this, this, and this.

I like the following quotation very much.

Newsletter

I hope to start a newsletter, which will have a new issue every full moon.

Interests

Other than my academic interests, I am also partial to composing music, modernist cuisine, fine dining, playing Dota, sudoku, listening to music, researching the history of board games, learning ancient languages, and writing various physics simulations. Perhaps I shall have more to say about some of these topics in the future.

Academic

I’ve just finished my MSc in Advanced Computer Science at Oriel College, at the University of Oxford. Before that, I did my undergraduate degree in Maths and Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, where I received the Bell Prize for being proxime accessit to the winner of the Miller Prize for Arts (which is awarded to the most distinguished student in the Faculty of Arts).

You can find a copy of my academic CV here.

Computer Science

In Computer Science, I am interested in type theory, category theory, quantum computation, and theorem provers, such as Lean and Agda. I have recently formalised Goodstein’s Theorem, and just need to do some final polishing before publishing this on Github. I am also considering formalising some of the basics of the random graph, and am making a start on formalising some of the literature on relevant logic. All of this is in Lean.

My Master’s Thesis was on string diagrams: these are used to graphically represent categories. A slightly abridged version is called String and Box Diagrams for Topoi, and is available for viewing. In particular, the thesis introduces new diagrams for topoi, an important kind of category, which have close connexions to logic. I demonstrate how to graphically represent topoi, and show that these diagrams can make it much easier to prove facts about topoi.

Philosophy

In (analytic) Philosophy, I am most interest in the following fields:

• logic;
• philosophy of mathematics;
• metaphysics;
• philosophy of language; and
• philosophy of computer science.

More specifically, I am often interested in paraconsistency, and often relevant logics. At the moment, I am trying to study paraconsistent types, and hopefully, I will be able to evaluate whether they can provide a suitable foundation for paraconsistent mathematics.

I wrote my undergraduate Philosophy dissertation on Inconsistent Set Theory. A slightly abridged version of my dissertation is called “Naïve Set/Class Theory and Second-Order Paraconsistent Logic”, and is available for viewing. In the paper, I try to construct a second-order paraconsistent logic for naïve set/class theory, using the semantics as the guiding force.

Mathematics

In Mathematics, I am interested in mathematical logic, type theory, set theory, category theory; and in general, mathematical foundations. I also enjoy some algebra and topology now and then.

I wrote my undergraduate Mathematics dissertation on Lindström’s Theorem. A slightly abridged version is called “Classifying Logics: Abstract Model Theory, an Introduction”, and is also available for viewing. This work is supposed to be an introduction for final-year maths undergraduates (and above), who are very familiar with abstract algebra, to the fields of Model Theory and Abstract Model Theory. That is, the study of properties and comparison of logics.