Miscellaneous contributions to automated deduction

John Slaney



Visualising Reasoning

This is the abstract of the paper:

John Slaney.
Visualising Reasoning: What ATP can learn from CP.
Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science 285 (2012): 57-70.

Tools for graphical representation of problems in automated deduction or of proof searches are rare and mostly primitive. By contrast, there is a more substantial history of work in the constraint programming community on information visualisation techniques for helping programmers and end users to understand problems, searches and solutions. Here we consider the extent to which concepts and tools from a constraint programming platform can be adapted for use with automatic theorem provers.



MINLOG

This is the abstract of the paper:

John Slaney.
MINLOG: A Minimal Logic Theorem Prover.
Proceedings of the fourteenth Conference on Automated Deduction (CADE-14) (1997): 268-271.

Minlog is a theorem prover for propositional minimal logic and Heyting's intuitionist logic. It implements a decision procedure based on a cut-free sequent calculus formulation of these systems. While the method it uses is rather unsophisticated, on small problems MINLOG is fast. It achieves speed by being carefully coded (in C) and by eliminating many obvious redundancies in proof searches.

It is thus useful as a point of comparison, since it represents what can be done by brute force rather than intelligence. The decision problem for the logics concerned is PSPACE-hard, so intelligence should easily triumph over mere speed. MINLOG provides a suitable baseline for evaluating implemented systems.

NOTE:
MINLOG is available by anonymous ftp. However, it is no longer supported and its use is not recommended. If you still wish to experiment with it, you may of course do so, but don't complain about anything it might [not] do!



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