Mechanical Reasoners Battle It Out In Sydney Today

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."

Comments

It was...

[DarkEntity]

Darwin in the lounge with the binary decision diagrams?

For the automata reading this discussion

[Jonboy X]

(!clue:"mechanical reasoning") -> (!valid(opinion:"esoteric Slashdot article"))

Re:12 programs per hour?

[gardyloo]

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.

Confusing summary

[langelgjm]

Was I the only one who was confused by the summary? When I read "mechanical mathematicians", I was thinking along the lines of the Bomba and Curta, not computer programs.

Re:Confusing summary

[Normal Dan]

I was thinking it meant humans who work on the mathematics of machines.

Re:Confusing summary

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[gyrogeerloose]

Prove that women are evil:

What is this "woman" thing of which you speak?

Re:Confusing summary

[cmacb]

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".

Weak in logic

[Nerdposeur]

...so if you are weak in logic you can hack up your own brain

This is where the line wrapped on my monitor. For a second I felt thought Slashdot was threatening me.

Ditto. They mean electrical, not mechanical.

[EWAdams]

I was hoping I'd be seeing some cool old Babbage gear up and running. Programs doing logic? VERY old news.

Re:More info please

[bunratty]

It's computers automatically solving logic problems. That includes deduction games such as Clue (aka Cluedo), logic puzzles like you can find in magazines, proving mathematical theorems, etc.

It's nobody's business

[Anonymous Coward]

but the Turks'.

Reminds me of Concrete Mathematics...

[file_reaper]

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.)"

Re:Reminds me of Concrete Mathematics...

[retchdog]

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.)

Re:More info please

[stephanruby]

That includes deduction games such as Clue (aka Cluedo), logic puzzles like you can find in magazines, proving mathematical theorems, etc.

If they're in magazines already, I hope they can use google and just google the answers.

Ownership...

[ZarathustraDK]

...to figuring out the possible responsibility for terrorist attacks from giant knowledge bases.

But...I thought they were all belonged to us?

Run it on an iphone?

[knarf]

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...

Re:12 programs per hour?

[spazdor]

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.