A pivoting approach to the solution of inference problems

Abstract

It is noted that inference problems in sentence logic may easily be transformed into equivalent numerical problems which can often be solved efficiently using techniques from integer programming. The author reviews this transformation and describes a heuristic solution method which has given good performance in practice. Some techniques from the integer programming literature that are useful for preconditioning numerically framed inference problems are also described. It is suggested that the elementary heuristic presented here, if properly implemented in the context of an efficient simplex routine, might prove useful for fast inference in propositional logic. >