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

[http://people.csail.mit.edu/nkushman/papers/acl2014.pdf](http://people.csail.mit.edu/nkushman/papers/acl2014.pdf)

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gus_massa
> _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”.

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patrickmay
Peter Norvig covered STUDENT
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUDENT_(computer_program)](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.

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foo2312
Perhaps also of interest in this context is the work of Gordon Novak
([http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/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](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/novak/ijcai77.html)

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dnautics
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.

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sp332
Why is that relevant? Anyway, computers are already good at syntax macro
expansion. I feel like that's even less "understanding."

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chatmasta
No link to the paper?

