Proof Planning

Proceedings Of The Third Artificial Intelligence Planning Systems Conference

Volume

Proceedings Of The Third Artificial Intelligence Planning Systems Conference

Contents

We describe proof planning, a technique for the global control of search in automatic theorem proving. A proof plan captures the common patterns of reasoning in a family of similar proofs and is used to guide the search for new proofs in this family. Proof plans are very similar to the plans constructed by plan formation techniques. Some differences are the nonpersistence of objects in the mathematical domain, the absence of goal interaction in mathematics, the high degree of generality of proof plans, the use of a metalogic to describe preconditions in proof planning and the use of annotations in formulae to guide search.