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No XTAG meeting, talk which will probably be of interest at that time



   Title:               The Mathematical Programming of Logic

   Speaker:             Vijay Chandru
                        Department of Computer Science and Automation
                        Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

   Time & Date	   Thursday, April 16, 1998 
			   10:30 - 12:00

   Location: To be determined (Anoop will forward)

   Abstract:

   Leibniz, in the 17th century, brought about the first
   important synthesis of logical deduction and mathematical
   computation.  His contribution was to point out that they are
   fundamentally the same.  Solving logical inference problems
   with mathematical programming methods may seem a bit like
   eating sauerkraut with chopsticks, because the two come from
   vastly different worlds.  Logical inference comes from a "left
   brain" world of formal languages and symbolic manipulation.
   vastly different worlds.  Logical inference comes from a "left
   brain" world of formal languages and symbolic manipulation.
   Mathematical programming derives from a "right brain" world of
   spatial models and numerical calculation. The thesis of this
   talk is that many deductive inference problems do in fact have
   the sort of mathematical structure that geometric methods
   (linear programming) can exploit.

   This perspective has yielded lovely structural results
   relating Modus Ponens / Tollens with linear programming
   relaxations, Resolution with cutting planes and Proof
   Signatures with mathematical programming duality.  New
   embeddings of inference in modal, temporal, predicate and
   partially interpreted logics in finite and infinite
   mathematical programmes will be presented.  And finally, the
   use of these results in devising decision procedures for
   hybrid systems will be discussed.


   [In collaboration with V.S.Borkar (IISc), J.N.Hooker (CMU),
    D. Micciancio (MIT) and S.K.Mitter (MIT)