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Mechanical Reasoners Battle It Out In Sydney Today

Posted by timothy on from the turk-v.-hal dept.

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."

7 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. It was... by DarkEntity · · Score: 4, Funny

    Darwin in the lounge with the binary decision diagrams?

  2. For the automata reading this discussion by Jonboy+X · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    --

    "In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
  3. Re:12 programs per hour? by gardyloo · · Score: 4, 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.

  4. Confusing summary by langelgjm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    "Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
    1. Re:Confusing summary by Normal+Dan · · Score: 3, Informative

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

      --
      A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
    2. Re:Confusing summary by gyrogeerloose · · Score: 3, Funny

      Prove that women are evil:

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

      --
      This ain't rocket surgery.
  5. Reminds me of Concrete Mathematics... by file_reaper · · 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.)"