purplecat

Achieved:

• Gave Dream Talk. AB suggested checking out Machine Learning literature and asking AI about testing.


• Got an IsaPlanner critic to work, but couldn't integrate it with the middle-out reasoning proof of yesterday.

Unachieved:

• Blue book note still unwritten but exists as a draft.


• End-to-end example of using program slicing to detect and error and then middle-out reasoning to fix it in IsaPlanner.


• Any work with Proof General.

So all in all, not bad for five days. However its all likely to go on a back-burner now since, as AB says, my proof planning work is a hobby these days. So whether I'll be able to build on the achievements is unclear.

Achieved:

• Decided what to say in Dream Talk*


• Gave up on critic and decided to see if we could get IsaPlanner to do what it should do after the critic happened. Got part way through implementing this, then got stuck on the need to use Middle-Out Reasoning (which means leaving blank bits in your proof and filling them in later) because MJo (implementor of Middle-Out Reasoning in IsaPlanner had to go for circuit training).


• More profitable discussions of proof specification languages - decided to try and write it up as a Blue Book Note** tomorrow.


• Agreed on datatype axioms to be provided for TPTP THF. Also agreed I should email GS and CB to request a "datatype" keyword in TPTP THF.


• Arranged to meet DA tomorrow afternoon.


• Attended an informal talk on Qigong.


• Following an emergency email, phoned G.'s school to say that her father had sprained his ankle (tackling his PhD student during a football game) so if an entirely strange man turned up to collect her he should not be treated as a pedophile of any description, only to find that B. had managed to get their phone number after all and had already spoken to them.


• Phoned home to a conversation that included such choice gems as "I told G. I could pour her some orange juice but she'd have to come and collect it herself" and "I don't think I can manage to cook pasta for supper since I can't carry the saucepan". He said not to come home early, but then amended it to see how much pain he was in tomorrow morning.

To Do:

• Write proof specification language stuff up as a Blue Book Note.


• Get middle-out reasoning working in IsaPlanner.

* My description of a DReaM Talk has got lost in comments somewhere. It's a 90 minute talk in which the use of slides and projection equipment is discouraged but handouts are allowed. It's supposed to cover work-in-progress, or areas of current difficulty and audience participation is expected. It's called Dream because the Mathematical Reasoning Group occasionally fancifully refers to itself as the Discovery and Reasoning in Mathematics (DReaM) group.

** The Blue Book Note web page is also password protected so there is no point linking to it. They are a series of short notes on work in progress and are specifically for "epsilon-baked ideas where 0 < epsilon < 1". They are called Blue Book Notes after Wittgenstein's Blue Book in which he wrote lecture notes which (AB at least) asserts are frequently contradictory. These days the notes are also stored in a series of lever arch files. At the time of writing there are 1,627 of these of which I have written 42 - putting me 7th in the "who has written the most blue book notes" league table. However AB has written 433 so I'm not going to be topping that league table any time soon.

( the current result of all the proof specification language discussions )