Mechanical Analysis of Finite Idempotent Relations

We use the technique of interactive theorem proving to develop the theory and an enumeration technique for finite idempotent relations. Starting from a short mathematical characterization of finite idempotents defined and proved in Isabelle/HOL, we derive first an iterative procedure to generate all instances of idempotents over a finite set. From there, we develop a more precise theoretical characterization giving rise to an efficient predicate that can be executed in the programming language ML. Idempotent relations represent a very basic, general mathematical concept but the steps taken to develop their theory with the help of Isabelle/HOL are representative for developing algorithms from a mathematical specification.