Rewriting Induction

Term rewriting can be used in proving theorems by induction. The use of term rewriting techniques to prove theorems by induction has been known as "inductionless induction" and "rewriting induction". This node points to some slides that I made after reading a paper in CADE-10 by Uday Reddy . Reddy's paper describes rewriting induction in a manner that makes the relation to classical induction clear. My slides give some inference rules that are implicitly present in Reddy's paper. Reddy's rules are forward chaining. My slides also give a set of backward chaining rules. A version of these slides were written for Alan Bundy's first induction workshop (I believe it was at CADE-11 in the summer of 1992).

the slides

David McAllester, March, 1995