Learning from Previous Proof Experience: A Survey

We present an overview of various learning techniques used in automated theorem provers. We characterize the main problems arising in this context and classify the solutions to these problems from published approaches. We analyze the suitability of several combinations of solutions for different approaches to theorem proving and place these combinations in a spectrum ranging from provers using very specialized learning approaches to optimally adapt to a small class of proof problems, to provers that learn more general kinds of knowledge, resulting in systems that are less efficient in special cases but show improved performance for a wide range of problems. Finally, we suggest combinations of solutions for various proof philosophies