Informal and Formal Representations in （非正式和正式的表示）.pdfVIP

STUDIES IN LOGIC, GRAMMAR AND RHETORIC 10 (23) 2007 Informal and Formal Representations in Mathematics Manfred Kerberi and Martin Polletii iSchool of Computer Science iiFachbereich Informatik University of Birmingham Universit¨at des Saarlandes Birmingham B15 2TT, England 66041 Saarbr¨ucken, Germany ∼ ∼ www.cs.bham.ac.uk/ mmk www.ags.uni-sb.de/ pollet Abstract. In this paper we discuss the importance of good representations in mathematics and relate them to general design issues. Good design makes life easy, bad design difficult. For this reason experienced mathematicians spend a significant amount of their time on the design of their concepts. While many formal systems try to support this by providing a highlevel language, we argue that more should be learned from the mathematical practice in order to improve the applicability of formal systems. It is not easy to say precisely what we learnt in the meantime, if we learnt anything at all. I believe that the most important results are: 1. we need experiments with much more advanced mathematics than al- ready done 2. a system for practical formalization of mathematics probably will not be a simple system based on small number of primitive notions 3. integration with a computer algebra systems may be necessary or at least a feasible system must have bigger computational power. Andrzej Trybulec [33] 1 Introduction There is an old debate on the foundations of mathematics, which goes at least back to the time when Alfred No