Change of Representation in Theorem Proving by Analogy

Constructing an analogy between a known and already proven theorem(the base case) and another yet to be proven theorem (the target case) oftenamounts to finding the appropriate representation at which the base and thetarget are similar. This is a well-known fact in mathematics, and it was cor-roborated by our empirical study of a mathematical textbook, which showedthat a reformulation of the representation of a theorem and its proof is in-deed more often than not a necessary prerequisite for an analogical inference.Thus machine supported reformulation becomes an important component ofautomated analogy-driven theorem proving too.The reformulation component proposed in this paper is embedded into aproof plan methodology based on methods and meta-methods, where the latterare used to change and appropriately adapt the methods. A theorem and itsproof are both represented as a method and then reformulated by the set ofmetamethods presented in this paper.Our approach supports analogy-driven theorem proving at various levels ofabstraction and in principle makes it independent of the given and often acci-dental representation of the given theorems. Different methods can representfully instantiated proofs, subproofs, or general proof methods, and hence ourapproach also supports these three kinds of analogy respectively. By attachingappropriate justifications to meta-methods the analogical inference can oftenbe justified in the sense of Russell.This paper presents a model of analogy-driven proof plan construction andfocuses on empirically extracted meta-methods. It classifies and formally de-scribes these meta-methods and shows how to use them for an appropriatereformulation in automated analogy-driven theorem proving.