Symbolic Equation Solving via Reinforcement Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Dabelow, Lennart, Ueda, Masahito
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Dabelow, Lennart
Ueda, Masahito
author_facet Dabelow, Lennart
Ueda, Masahito
contents Machine-learning methods are gradually being adopted in a wide variety of social, economic, and scientific contexts, yet they are notorious for struggling with exact mathematics. A typical example is computer algebra, which includes tasks like simplifying mathematical terms, calculating formal derivatives, or finding exact solutions of algebraic equations. Traditional software packages for these purposes are commonly based on a huge database of rules for how a specific operation (e.g., differentiation) transforms a certain term (e.g., sine function) into another one (e.g., cosine function). These rules have usually needed to be discovered and subsequently programmed by humans. Efforts to automate this process by machine-learning approaches are faced with challenges like the singular nature of solutions to mathematical problems, when approximations are unacceptable, as well as hallucination effects leading to flawed reasoning. We propose a novel deep-learning interface involving a reinforcement-learning agent that operates a symbolic stack calculator to explore mathematical relations. By construction, this system is capable of exact transformations and immune to hallucination. Using the paradigmatic example of solving linear equations in symbolic form, we demonstrate how our reinforcement-learning agent autonomously discovers elementary transformation rules and step-by-step solutions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_13447
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Symbolic Equation Solving via Reinforcement Learning
Dabelow, Lennart
Ueda, Masahito
Machine Learning
Symbolic Computation
Machine-learning methods are gradually being adopted in a wide variety of social, economic, and scientific contexts, yet they are notorious for struggling with exact mathematics. A typical example is computer algebra, which includes tasks like simplifying mathematical terms, calculating formal derivatives, or finding exact solutions of algebraic equations. Traditional software packages for these purposes are commonly based on a huge database of rules for how a specific operation (e.g., differentiation) transforms a certain term (e.g., sine function) into another one (e.g., cosine function). These rules have usually needed to be discovered and subsequently programmed by humans. Efforts to automate this process by machine-learning approaches are faced with challenges like the singular nature of solutions to mathematical problems, when approximations are unacceptable, as well as hallucination effects leading to flawed reasoning. We propose a novel deep-learning interface involving a reinforcement-learning agent that operates a symbolic stack calculator to explore mathematical relations. By construction, this system is capable of exact transformations and immune to hallucination. Using the paradigmatic example of solving linear equations in symbolic form, we demonstrate how our reinforcement-learning agent autonomously discovers elementary transformation rules and step-by-step solutions.
title Symbolic Equation Solving via Reinforcement Learning
topic Machine Learning
Symbolic Computation
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.13447