Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Towards a Wiki For Formally Verified Mathematics

Posted by kdawson on from the preparing-the-ground-for-our-robot-overlords dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Cameron Freer, an instructor in pure mathematics at MIT, is working on an intriguing project called vdash.org (video from O'Reilly Ignite Boston 4): a math wiki which only allows true theorems to be added! Based on Isabelle, a free-software theorem prover, the wiki will state all of known mathematics in a machine-readable language and verify all theorems for correctness, thus providing a knowledge base for interactive proof assistants. In addition to its benefits for education and research, such a project could reveal undiscovered connections between fields of mathematics, thus advancing some fields with no further work being necessary."

4 of 299 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Uh ... by mckinnsb · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No. I'm only a math minor/computer science major, but from my limited understanding on the subject (as it was related to me by one of my smarter professors), Godel showed that Russell's system could not encompass all true statements. The problem (simplistically) lies in what is *demonstrably true* and what is *provably true*. In particular, Godel showed that Russell's system would have problems with things that are demonstrably true, or what you might call "self-evident truths" in philosophy.

    The system proposed however, might find things that are true that people haven't thought about proving yet. I'm sure a mathematician could come along and give a more complete answer.

  2. Re:Skynet by Relic+of+the+Future · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Ha ha, yes, very funny... but if you read the slides from the site (specifically, slide 18) he makes reference to that very fact.

    We are not scanning all those books to be read by people, we are scanning them to be read by an AI. --George Dyson, on his visit to Google, 2005.

    --
    Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
  3. Re:How much translation is needed? by ceoyoyo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's rather a lot of work to prove that 2+2=4 if you start from basics by hand too.

    The link you provided looks like it's the LONGEST path they could find. Not the shortest. Plus, from a quick reading, it looks like they were actually proving that (2+0i) + (2+0i) = (4+0i), which is a little bit different.

  4. Re:How much translation is needed? by tehcyder · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's rather a lot of work to prove that 2+2=4 if you start from basics by hand too.

    My six year old daughter has proved to my satisfaction that 2+2=4, simply by counting on her fingers.

    --
    To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it