Mechanical Reasoners Battle It Out In Sydney Today 45
Stephan Schulz writes "Today, the CADE ATP System
Competition will pit about 20 of the worlds most powerful mechanical
mathematicians against each other — and for the first time they can win not only honour, but a monetary prize. The systems will
reason against the clock on tasks ranging from undergraduate math problems and Cluedo-like puzzles to
figuring out the possible responsibility for terrorist attacks from giant knowledge bases. If you think that is not impressive enough,
they are doing it at a rate of 12 problems per hour, all day long. The competition starts at 10 a.m. in Sydney, Australia, which is midnight UTC. Live results will be available at the competition page. For added geek appeal, most of the contenders are available under open source licenses, so if you are weak in logic you can hack up your own brain extension and run it on an iPhone."
12 programs per hour? (Score:1, Funny)
That's only 7 minutes per.
Re:12 programs per hour? (Score:5, Funny)
Sweet! I want to get me some of those 84 minute hours like they have in Australia!
P.S. I think you should volunteer your mathematical abilities to the teams.
Re: (Score:1)
Sweet! I want to get me some of those 84 minute hours like they have in Australia!
You think that's nice? Wait till you try metric time!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The theorem-proving race was neck-in-neck until we got to the fourth event, the Halting Problem.
No clear winner for this one yet. Stay tuned.
It was... (Score:4, Funny)
For the automata reading this discussion (Score:5, Funny)
(!clue:"mechanical reasoning") -> (!valid(opinion:"esoteric Slashdot article"))
Make 'em (Score:1)
take a piss [worldwideh...center.net] test.
Confusing summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Confusing summary (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I was thinking along the lines of a mechanical proof:
Prove that women are evil:
1) Women require time and money
Women= Time * Money
2) Time is money, therefore
Women= Money^2
3) Money is the root of all evil
Money=sqrt(Evil)^2
4) Therefore,
Women=Evil
Q.E.D.
Re:Confusing summary (Score:4, Funny)
What is this "woman" thing of which you speak?
Ditto. They mean electrical, not mechanical. (Score:3, Interesting)
I was hoping I'd be seeing some cool old Babbage gear up and running. Programs doing logic? VERY old news.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ditto. I went looking for some use of the word "mechanical" other than this "summary". Didn't find any.
So I'm guess that this article was submited in Chinese and then run through several language translations (maybe even mechanical ones) before being rendered into "English".
Nice touch (Score:2)
I like how they included the t-shirt sizes next to each entrant. They skew a bit toward the Large and X-Large sizes. Very logical.
Weak in logic (Score:3, Funny)
This is where the line wrapped on my monitor. For a second I felt thought Slashdot was threatening me.
More info please (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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If they're in magazines already, I hope they can use google and just google the answers.
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, they wouldn't use an already published ones. But you can expect posts like these to Yahoo Answers and Dr. Math at the rate of 12/hour:
ReasonBot07281 asks:
plz hlp need answer. whut iz proof for even numz?! not hmwork just wanderin the answers plz send quick tnkx!!!!!!!!!!1
Which will only get better once the users of said forums catch onto what's going on, and l33tteam's mechanical reasoner starts returning answers like "2=1+I like to lick balls". "For all x, there exists an n where the owners of th
Re: (Score:1)
It's a competition where automated theorem provers for 1st order logic [wikipedia.org] are given a subset [miami.edu] of a problem library [miami.edu].
I don't think any of the provers are using genetic algorithms, since they're suited for optimization, not deduction.
It's nobody's business (Score:2, Funny)
but the Turks'.
to save time, the answer is.... (Score:2, Funny)
Reminds me of Concrete Mathematics... (Score:5, Funny)
The book...not mathematics of concrete as is said in the book...
"When DEK taught Concrete Mathematics at Stanford for the first time he explained the somewhat strange title by saying that it was his attempt to teach a math course that was hard instead of soft. He announced that, contrary to the expectations of some of his colleagues, he was not going to teach the Theory of Aggregates, not Stone's Embedding Theorem, nor even the Stone-Cech compactification. (Several students from the civil engineering department got up and quietly left the room.)"
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And DEK's further note about the name: "Not even I was brazen enough to call the course `distinuous mathematics'."
(For those unfamiliar, the idea of the book (and I presume the course) was to build up to elegant concepts and results like in advanced calculus (continuous mathematics), while using an elementary discrete combinatoric context. Hence, con-crete math.)
Ownership... (Score:2, Funny)
But...I thought they were all belonged to us?
Dough! I Misread the headline.. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
You think you were confused? I was picturing robotic 60 Minutes anchors [wikipedia.org] duking it out in front of the Opera House...
Pretty cool (Score:1)
I've heard about this kind of thing in the past. I didn't realize they had working programs, though.
I have to admit, of course, that this does somewhat scare me. After all, it would seem they're going after the usefulness of my Bachelor's of Science! ;) (NOTTTTTTTTT)
Run it on an iphone? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd say there are many better options to run an extention to your brain on than a proprietary, chained and DRM-encumbered device with a remote kill switch under control of a for-profit organisation...
And the final puzzle? (Score:2)
Oh yes, I took it there
More info: FLOSS tools and ongoing Fedora work (Score:2)