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Restoring Natural Language as a Computerised Mathematics Input Method

  • Conference paper
Towards Mechanized Mathematical Assistants (MKM 2007, Calculemus 2007)

Abstract

Methods for computerised mathematics have found little appeal among mathematicians because they call for additional skills which are not available to the typical mathematician. We herein propose to reconcile computerised mathematics to mathematicians by restoring natural language as the primary medium for mathematical authoring. Our method associates portions of text with grammatical argumentation roles and computerises the informal mathematical style of the mathematician. Typical abbreviations like the aggregation of equations a = b > c, are not usually accepted as input to computerised languages. We propose specific annotations to explicate the morphology of such natural language style, to accept input in this style, and to expand this input in the computer to obtain the intended representation (i.e., a = b and b > c). We have named this method syntax souring in contrast to the usual syntax sugaring. All results have been implemented in a prototype editor developed on top of \({\rm\kern-.15em T\kern-.1667em\lower.7ex\hbox{E}\kern-.125emX}\) \(_{{\rm {\sc MACS}}}\) as a GUI for the core grammatical aspect of MathLang, a framework developed by the ULTRA group to computerise and formalise mathematics.

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Manuel Kauers Manfred Kerber Robert Miner Wolfgang Windsteiger

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Kamareddine, F., Lamar, R., Maarek, M., Wells, J.B. (2007). Restoring Natural Language as a Computerised Mathematics Input Method. In: Kauers, M., Kerber, M., Miner, R., Windsteiger, W. (eds) Towards Mechanized Mathematical Assistants. MKM Calculemus 2007 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4573. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73086-6_23

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73086-6_23

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-73083-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-73086-6

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