Traditionpartner, mathematics research projects are carry outed by a minuscule number (typicpartner one to five) of expert mathematicians, each of which are recognizable enough with all aspects of the project that they can verify each other’s contributions. It has been challenging to schedule mathematical projects at huger scales, and particularly those that comprise contributions from the vague accessible, due to the insist to verify all of the contributions; a individual error in one component of a mathematical argument could inverify the entire project. Furthermore, the sophistication of a standard math project is such that it would not be down-to-earth to await a member of the accessible, with say an undergraduate level of mathematics education, to give in a uncomardentingful way to many such projects.
For roverhappinessed reasons, it is also challenging to include helpance from up-to-date AI tools into a research project, as these tools can “hallucinate” plausible-seeing, but nonsensical arguments, which therefore insist insertitional verification before they could be inserted into the project.
Proof helpant languages, such as Lean, provide a potential way to loss these obstacles, and allow for huge-scale collaborations involving professional mathematicians, the wideer accessible, and/or AI tools to all give to a intricate project, provided that it can be broken up in a modular style into minusculeer pieces that can be strikeed without necessarily comardent all aspects of the project as a whole. Projects to createalize an existing mathematical result (such as the createalization of the recent proof of the PFR conjecture of Marton, talked in this previous blog post) are currently the main examples of such huge-scale collaborations that are allowd via proof helpants. At contransient, these createalizations are mostly crowdsourced by human contributors (which comprise both professional mathematicians and interested members of the vague accessible), but there are also some nascent efforts to include more automated tools (either “excellent elderly-styleed” automated theorem exhibitrs, or more up-to-date AI-based tools) to help with the (still quite tedious) task of createalization.
However, I apexhibit that this sort of paradigm can also be participated to spendigate novel mathematics, as resistd to createalizing existing mathematics. The online collaborative “Polymath” projects that disconnectal people including myself orderly in the past are one example of this; but as they did not include proof helpants into the toilflow, the contributions had to be deal withd and verified by the human moderators of the project, which was quite a time-consuming responsibility, and one which confiinsist the ability to scale these projects up further. But I am hoping that the insertition of proof helpants will erase this bottleneck.
I am particularly interested in the possibility of using these up-to-date tools to spendigate a class of many mathematical problems at once, as resistd to the current approach of cgo ining on only one or two problems at a time. This seems appreciate an inherently modularizable and repetitive task, which could particularly profit from both crowdsourcing and automated tools, if given the right platcreate to rigorously schedule all the contributions; and it is a type of mathematics that previous methods usupartner could not scale up to (except perhaps over a period of many years, as individual papers sluggishly spendigate the class one data point at a time until a reasonable intuition about the class is achieveed). Among other leangs, having a huge data set of problems to toil on could be beneficial for benchlabeling various automated tools and contrast the efficacy of branch offent toilflows.
One recent example of such a project was the Busy Beaver Challenge, which showed this July that the fifth Busy Beaver number was equivalent to . Some elderlyer crowdsourced computational projects, such as the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), are also somewhat aappreciate in spirit to this type of project (though using more traditional proof of toil certificates instead of proof helpants). I would be interested in hearing of any other extant examples of crowdsourced projects exploring a mathematical space, and whether there are lessons from those examples that could be relevant for the project I present here.
More definitepartner I would appreciate to present the chaseing (acunderstandledgetedly man-made) project as a pilot to further test out this paradigm, which was eased by a MathOverflow ask from last year, and talked somewhat further on my Mastodon account lowly afterwards.
The problem is in the field of universal algebra, and worrys the (medium-scale) exploration of plain equational theories for magmas. A magma is noleang more than a set provideped with a binary operation . Initipartner, no insertitional axioms on this operation are imposed, and as such magmas by themselves are somewhat tedious objects. Of course, with insertitional axioms, such as the identity axiom or the associative axiom, one can get more recognizable mathematical objects such as groups, semigroups, or monoids. Here we will be interested in (constant-free) equational axioms, which are axioms of equivalentity involving transmitions built from the operation and one or more indeend variables in . Two recognizable examples of such axioms are the commutative axiom
and the associative axiom
where are indeend variables in the magma . On the other hand the (left) identity axiom would not be pondered an equational axiom here, as it comprises a constant (the identity element), which we will not ponder here.
To depict the project I have in mind, let me first present eleven examples of equational axioms for magmas:
Thus, for instance, Equation7 is the commutative axiom, and Equation10 is the associative axiom. The constant axiom Equation1 is the sturdyest, as it forces the magma to have at most one element; at the opposite inanxious, the reflexive axiom Equation11 is the frailest, being satisfied by every individual magma.
One can then ask which axioms recommend which others. For instance, Equation1 implies all the other axioms in this enumerate, which in turn recommend Equation11. Equation8 implies Equation9 as a exceptional case, which in turn implies Equation10 as a exceptional case. The filled poset of implications can be depicted by the chaseing Hasse diagram:
This in particular answers the MathOverflow ask of whether there were equational axioms interarbitrate between the constant axiom Equation1 and the associative axiom Equation10.
Most of the implications here are quite effortless to exhibit, but there is one non-unpresentant one, achieveed in this answer to a MathOverflow post seally roverhappinessed to the preceding one:
Proposition 1 Equation4 implies Equation7.
Proof: Suppose that adheres Equation4, thus
for all . Specializing to , we end
and hence by another application of (1) we see that is idempotent:
Now, replacing by in (1) and then using (2), we see that
so in particular commutes with :
Also, from two applications (1) one has
Thus (3) simplifies to , which is Equation7.
A createalization of the above argument in Lean can be set up here.
I will relabel that the vague ask of determining whether one set of equational axioms determines another is undecidable; see Theorem 14 of this paper of Perkins. (This is aappreciate in spirit to the more well understandn undecidability of various word problems.) So, the situation here is somewhat aappreciate to the Busy Beaver Challenge, in that past a certain point of intricateity, we would necessarily come atraverse unsolvable problems; but hopefilledy there would be engaging problems and phenomena to uncover before we achieve that threshelderly.
The above Hasse diagram does not fair state implications between the enumerateed equational axioms; it also states non-implications between the axioms. For instance, as seen in the diagram, the commutative axiom Equation7 does not recommend the Equation4 axiom
To see this, one srecommend has to originate an example of a magma that adheres the commutative axiom Equation7, but not the Equation4 axiom; but in this case one can srecommend pick (for instance) the organic numbers with the insertition operation . More generpartner, the diagram states the chaseing non-implications, which (together with the showd implications) endly portrays the poset of implications between the eleven axioms:
- Equation2 does not recommend Equation3.
- Equation3 does not recommend Equation5.
- Equation3 does not recommend Equation7.
- Equation5 does not recommend Equation6.
- Equation5 does not recommend Equation7.
- Equation6 does not recommend Equation7.
- Equation6 does not recommend Equation10.
- Equation7 does not recommend Equation6.
- Equation7 does not recommend Equation10.
- Equation9 does not recommend Equation8.
- Equation10 does not recommend Equation9.
- Equation10 does not recommend Equation6.
The reader is seekd to come up with counterexamples that show some of these implications. The difficultest type of counterexamples to discover are the ones that show that Equation9 does not recommend Equation8: a solution (in Lean) can be set up here. I placed proofs in Lean of all the above implications and anti-implications can be set up in this github repository file.
As one can see, it is already somewhat tedious to compute the Hasse diagram of fair eleven equations. The project I present is to try to broaden this Hasse diagram by a couple orders of magnitude, covering a presentantly huger set of equations. The set I present is the set of equations that participate the magma operation at most four times, up to retaging and the reflexive and symmetric axioms of equivalentity; this comprises the eleven equations above, but also many more. How many more? Recall that the Catalan number is the number of ways one can create an transmition out of applications of a binary operation (applied to placehelderlyer variables); and, given a string of placehelderlyer variables, the Bell number is the number of ways (up to retaging) to scheduleate names to each of these variables, where some of the placehelderlyers are allowed to be scheduleateed the same name. As a consequence, ignoring symmetry, the number of equations that comprise at most four operations is
The number of equations in which the left-hand side and right-hand side are identical is
these are all equivalent to reflexive axiom (Equation11). The remaining equations come in pairs by the symmetry of equivalentity, so the total size of is
I have not yet originated the filled enumerate of such identities, but presumably this will be straightforward to do in a standard computer language such as Python (I have not tried this, but I imagine some back-and-forth with a up-to-date AI would let one originate most of the insistd code). [UPDATE, Sep 26: Amir Livne Bar-on has kindly enumerated all the equations, of which there are actually 4694.]
It is not clear to me at all what the geometry of will see appreciate. Will most equations be incomparable with each other? Will it stratify into layers of “sturdy” and “frail” axioms? Will there be a lot of equivalent axioms? It might be engaging to enroll now any speculations as what the arrange of this poset, and contrast these foreseeions with the outcome of the project afterwards.
A brute force computation of the poset would then insist comparisons, which sees rather daunting; but of course due to the axioms of a fragmentary order, one could presumably acunderstandledge the poset by a much minusculeer number of comparisons. I am leanking that it should be possible to crowdsource the exploration of this poset in the create of subleave outions to a central repository (such as the github repository I fair originated) of proofs in Lean of implications or non-implications between various equations, which could be verifyd in Lean, and also checked aachievest some file enrolling the current status (genuine, inalter, or discdisponder) of all the comparisons, to dodge redundant effort. Most subleave outions could be deal withd automaticpartner, with relatively little human moderation insistd; and the status of the poset could be refreshd after each such subleave oution.
I would imagine that there is some “low-hanging fruit” that could set up a huge number of implications (or anti-implications) quite easily. For instance, laws such as Equation2 or Equation3 more or less endly portray the binary operation , and it should be quite effortless to check which of the laws are implied by either of these two laws. The poset has a mirrorion symmetry associated to replacing the binary operator by its mirrorion , which in principle cuts down the total toil by a factor of about two. Specific examples of magmas, such as the organic numbers with the insertition operation, adhere some set of equations in but not others, and so could be participated to originate a huge number of anti-implications. Some existing automated proving tools for equational logic, such as Prover9 and Mace4 (for achieveing implications and anti-implications admireively), could then be participated to deal with most of the remaining “effortless” cases (though some toil may be insisted to alter the outputs of such tools into Lean). The remaining “difficult” cases could then be focparticipated by some combination of human contributors and more progressd AI tools.
Perhaps, in analogy with createalization projects, we could have a semi-createal “blueprint” evolving in parallel with the createal Lean component of the project. This way, the project could hug human-written proofs by contributors who do not necessarily have any proficiency in Lean, as well as contributions from automated tools (such as the aforerefered Prover9 and Mace4), whose output is in some other createat than Lean. The task of altering these semi-createal proofs into Lean could then be done by other humans or automated tools; in particular I imagine up-to-date AI tools could be particularly precious for this portion of the toilflow. I am not quite certain though if existing blueprint gentleware can scale to deal with the huge number of individual proofs that would be originated by this project; and as this portion would not be createpartner verified, a presentant amount of human moderation might also be insisted here, and this also might not scale properly. Perhaps the semi-createal portion of the project could instead be scheduled on a forum such as this blog, in a aappreciate spirit to past Polymath projects.
It would be pleasant to be able to fuse such a project with some sort of graph visualization gentleware that can apexhibit an inend determination of the poset as input (in which each potential comparison in is labeled as either genuine, inalter, or discdisponder), ends the graph as much as possible using the axioms of fragmentary order, and then contransients the partipartner understandn poset in a visupartner requesting way. If anyone understands of such a gentleware package, I would be greeted to hear of it in the comments.
Anyway, I would be greeted to achieve any feedback on this project; in insertition to the previous seeks, I would be interested in any presentions for improving the project, as well as gauging whether there is adequate interest in participating to actupartner begin it. (I am imagining running it uncltimely aprolonged the lines of a Polymath project, though perhaps not createpartner taged as such.)
