| EPSRC Reference: |
EP/G002290/1 |
| Title: |
Automated Formal Proofs for Polynomial and Transcendental Problems |
| Principal Investigator: |
Paulson, Professor LC |
| Other Investigators: |
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| Researcher Co-investigators: |
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| Project Partners: |
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| Department: |
Computer Laboratory |
| Organisation: |
University of Cambridge |
| Scheme: |
Standard Research |
| Starts: |
01 September 2008 |
Ends: |
31 August 2009 |
Value (£): |
86,405
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| EPSRC Research Topic Classifications: |
| Fundamentals of Computing |
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| EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications: |
| No relevance to Underpinning Sectors |
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| Related Grants: |
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| Panel History: |
| Panel Date | Panel Name | Outcome |
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21 Apr 2008
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ICT Prioritisation Panel (April 2008)
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Announced
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Summary on Grant Application Form |
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Many applications in science and engineering involve mathematical formulas. Such formulas may involve polynomials, logarithms, exponentials and related functions, perhaps combined using logical symbols to express conditional statements. No automatic procedure exists for solving such problems in the general case. Where automatic procedures do exist, they are often far too expensive (in terms of computer time and memory requirements) to use in practice. However, a judicious selection of specialised procedures can yield efficient solutions for many problems that arise in practice. The proposal is to identify and implement variety of such procedures.This work will be undertaken in the context of software tools known as interactive theorem provers. These tools perform logical deductions to be very high degree of reliability; they are increasingly being utilised to help assure correctness for safety critical applications. A primary challenge of this project is to reconcile the detailed low-level checking used in interactive theorem provers with the high-level reasoning typical of most approaches to solving mathematical formulas. One fruitful technique is to deliver evidence from the mathematical solver to the interactive theorem prover: for some types of problems, finding the solution is difficult, but verifying a claimed solution is easy.
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Key Findings |
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The purpose of this one-year project was to deliver specialised algorithmic support for problems involving polynomials and transcendental functions. The general case being intractable, the point was to identify and solve important special cases. The outcome consisted largely of code, added to the Isabelle theorem prover, for deciding important classes of arithmetic problems. An additional outcome is an Isabelle theory of formal power series, which provides a basis for formalising approximations to transcendental functions.
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Potential use in non-academic contexts |
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No information has been submitted for this grant.
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Impacts |
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No information has been submitted for this grant.
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Sectors submitted by the Researcher |
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Information & Communication Technologies
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| Project URL: |
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| Further Information: |
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| Organisation Website: |
http://www.cam.ac.uk |