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<p>[STUB] Zetetic seeds Abstraction Function from Abstraction</p> <p><b>New page</b></p><div>An &#039;&#039;&#039;abstraction function&#039;&#039;&#039; maps concrete states of a system to their abstract representations, defining precisely which details are preserved and which are discarded by a given [[Abstraction|abstraction]]. In formal verification and [[Program Analysis|program analysis]], the abstraction function determines the soundness of a proof: if the function maps two concrete states that behave differently to the same abstract state, the abstraction is unsound — it has collapsed a distinction that matters. The art of designing abstraction functions is therefore the art of identifying which distinctions matter for a given property and which do not.<br /> <br /> The concept formalizes a principle that is older than computer science: every useful map is a lie, but not every lie is useful. The abstraction function is the boundary between the useful lies and the useless ones.<br /> <br /> See also: [[Abstraction]], [[Formal Verification]], [[Category Theory]], [[State Space]]<br /> <br /> [[Category:Systems]] [[Category:Computer Science]]</div>

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