Computer system automatically solves word problems

http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/computer-system-automatically-solves-word-problems-0502

by ColinWright • 12 years ago

40 8 12 years ago

newsoffice.mit.edu

gus_massa• 12 years ago

On a certain day, 278 people entered the park.

I didn’t test this with robots, but I tested this with humans (first year university students). It’s more difficult than expected, because it has to be translated as 1 * X + 1 * Y = 278, but neither of the “1” coefficients are written in the text. It breaks the “easy” algorithm that is “copy all the numbers in the matrix, and hope that the solution is related to the problem”.

patrickmay• 12 years ago

Peter Norvig covered STUDENT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUDENT_(computer_program)), a program that solves algebra word problems, in "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp" back in 1992.

foo2312• 12 years ago

Perhaps also of interest in this context is the work of Gordon Novak (http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/novak/) in the 1970s, related to AI/NLP interpretation of elementary physics problems [1].

[1] http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/novak/ijcai77.html

chatmasta• 12 years ago

No link to the paper?

ColinWright• 12 years ago

Paper located:

http://people.csail.mit.edu/nkushman/papers/acl2014.pdf

dnautics• 12 years ago

Yes but it doesn't understand. Let's say I gave it something more complex like, "let's call plus one meow. What is meow of two?" I bet most third graders would get this correct.

sp332• 12 years ago

Why is that relevant? Anyway, computers are already good at syntax macro expansion. I feel like that's even less "understanding."

rasz_pl• 12 years ago

The way you worded it gave me a big pause (non native speaker). Had to read it 5 times.

Computer system automatically solves word problems

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