On 25 Mar 2012, at 12:31, Phil Clayton wrote: > On 24/03/12 09:32, Rob Arthan wrote: >> The scripts for the ProofPower mathematical case studies have a little tool >> called "check_thms" which does a quality assurance check on the the theorems >> in a theory. It checks against: >> >> a) Theorems with free variables. Typically this means you forgot an outer >> universal quantifier. Later on you will be puzzled when tools like the >> rewriting tools think you don't want the free variables to be instantiated. >> >> b) Theorems with variables bound by logical quantifiers (universal, >> existential and unique existential) that are not used in the body of the >> abstraction. This happens for various reasons (often hand in hand with (a)). >> It is misleading for the reader and can be confusing when you try to use the >> theorem. >> >> It outputs a little report on any problems it finds. >> >> I am considering putting a bug-fixed and documented version of check_thms in >> the next working release of ProofPower. Any comments or suggestions for >> other things to check for would be welcome. > > I am wondering about a stronger version of check b for individual conjuncts > of a theorem. In the past, I have found that e.g. rewriting can be awkward > when an equational conjunct of a theorem does not mention a universally > quantified variable (that is mentioned by other conjuncts). I think the > issue was when the unmentioned variable was quantified over a non-maximal > set, so this is probably most relevant to Z. For example, given > > │ _ ^ _ : ℤ × ℕ → ℤ > ├────── > │ ∀ i : ℤ; j : ℕ ⦁ i ^ 0 = 1 ∧ i ^ (j + 1) = i * i ^ j > > I think rewriting with the base case requires manual intervention to provide > a value for j,
Indeed. ∀ i : ℤ; j : X ⦁ i ^ 0 = 1 amounts to a convoluted way of saying "either X is empty or ∀ i : ℤ ^ 0 = 1". > so the following would be preferable: > > ├────── > │ ∀ i : ℤ ⦁ i ^ 0 = 1 ∧ (∀ j : ℕ ⦁ i ^ (j + 1) = i * i ^ j) > > I expect that this sort of check would be dependent on the current proof > context (perhaps making use of canonicalization support) so may not be > desirable as part of the same utility. I think a simple heuristic would work. I think is reasonable to say that in a predicate of the form: ∀ ... x : X | P ⦁ Q1 ∧ Q2 ∧ ... If there is an i such that x doesn't appear free in P or Qi, then report a possible problem. There are many cases (e.g., law of transivity) where a theorem has an implication with an antecedent that contains variables that are not in the succedent, but it is a reasonable style rule in Z not to disguise such an implication by burying the antecedent in an implication. > > >> This is currently just for HOL, but I could do something similar for Z too. > > Certainly this would be a useful facility for HOL users but I could only make > use of a Z version. > > Regards, > > Phil > > > P.S. The above formal text is UTF8 encoded! Hopefully that is not a problem > these days. It would be useful to know if any mail systems aren't displaying > it properly. > It looks good to me. I must get round to some more work on Unicode and UTF-8 for ProofPower. Thanks for the input. Regards, Rob. _______________________________________________ Proofpower mailing list Proofpower@lemma-one.com http://lemma-one.com/mailman/listinfo/proofpower_lemma-one.com