It is shown that any recognition problem solved by a polynomial time-bounded nondeterministic Turing machine can be “reduced” to the problem of determining whether a given propositional formula is a tautology. Here “reduced ” means, roughly speaking, that the first problem can be solved deterministically in polynomial time provided an oracle is available for solving the second. From this notion of reducible, polynomial degrees of difficulty are defined, and it is shown that the problem of determining tautologyhood has the same polynomial degree as the problem of determining whether the first of two given graphs is isomorphic to a subgraph of the second. Other examples are discussed. A method of measuring the complexity of proof procedures for the predicate calculus is introduced and discussed. Throughout this paper, a set of strings 1 means a set of strings on some fixed, large, finite alphabet Σ. This alphabet is large enough to include symbols for all sets described here. All Turing machines are deterministic recognition devices, unless the contrary is explicitly stated.

description language ella 1 which we use, its formal structural operational semantics, and its embedding in the higher-order logic proof system Lambda 2. Finally we discuss applications of this approach which include the ability to prove results about the simulation mechanism, formal symbolic simulation

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to sample problems including the "Monkey and Bananas " puzzle and the 'Tower of Hanoi " puzzle. The paper exhibits solutions to these problems obtained by QA3, a computer program bused on these theorem-proving methods. In addition, the paper shows how QA3 can write simple

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This thesis discusses the use of the real numbers in theorem proving. Typically, theorem provers only support a few `discrete' datatypes such as the natural numbers. However the availability of the real numbers opens up many interesting and important application areas, such as the verification

Abstract. Deduction modulo is a way to remove computational arguments from proofs by reasoning modulo a congruence on propositions. Such a technique, issued from automated theorem proving, is of much wider interest because it permits to separate computations and deductions in a clean way. The first

logical structure into account. We propose the first method that has the full power of both graphical model inference and first-order theorem proving (in finite domains with Herbrand interpretations). We first define probabilistic theorem proving, their generalization, as the problem of computing

This talk reviews those efforts in automatic theorem proving, during the past few years, which have emphasized techniques other than resolution. These include: knowledge bases, natural deduction, reduction, (rewrite rules), typing, procedures, advice, controlled forward chaining, algebraic

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