A teaching tool for proving equivalences between logical formulae

Abstract

In this paper we describe a teaching tool for proving equivalences between propositional logic formulae, using rewrite rules such as De Morgan's laws and double negation. This tool is based on an earlier tool for rewriting logical formulae into disjunctive normal form (DNF). Both tools make use of a rewrite strategy, which specifies how an exercise can be solved stepwise. Different types of feedback can be calculated automatically from such a strategy specification. We describe a strategy for constructing expert-like equivalence proofs, and present two techniques for improving the proofs that are generated by the strategy. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.