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Equality control methods in machine theorem proving

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Cybernetics Aims and scope

Conclusion

In this survey we have not considered any of the issues related to the design of problemoriented machine proving systems and the use of heuristic methods. This does not mean that these issues are ignored by the scientific community. On the contrary, combination of mathematical-logic rules with heuristics in machine proving procedures is a necessary condition for achieving useful results. An important example of such combination is the mixed unification considered in subsec. 2.4. A logical conclusion of this approach should involve replacing the general unification algorithm with special-purpose equation solvers, assuming that this is allowed by the relevant theory. (Such an approach has already been sketched in logic programming [56].) There are examples of such heuristics, but their development is not always accompanied by sufficiently complete mathematical argument, which unfortunately is characteristic of many propositions in the heuristic framework.

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Authors
  1. A. I. Degtyarev
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  2. A. A. Voronkov
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Additional information

Translated from Kibernetika, No. 3, pp. 34–41, May–June, 1986.

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Degtyarev, A.I., Voronkov, A.A. Equality control methods in machine theorem proving. Cybern Syst Anal 22, 298–307 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01069968

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