Ascertaining Mathematical Theorems 1

Whereas to most logicians, the word “theorem” refers to any statement which has been shown to be true, to mathematicians, the word “Theorem” is, relatively speaking, rarely applied, and denotes something far more special. In this paper, we examine some of the underlying reasons behind this difference in terminology, and we show how this discrepancy might be exploited, in order to build a computer system which automatically selects the latter type of “Theorems” from amongst the former. Indeed, we have begun building the automated discovery system MATHsAiD, the design of which is based upon our research. We provide some preliminary results produced by this system, and compare these results to Theorems appearing in various mathematics textbooks.