For personal use and it must work offline:
pc or android .
I want something that can solve algebra word problems.
better if open sourced too.
e.g
"A man is 20 years older than his son. if his son is 18 y.o how old is the man?".
Simple basic algebra word problem solver.
problems you'll find in a typical secondary school text book.
I was glancing thru a secondary school text when i had the idea that software could parse the questions and solve them. But a google search has yielded nothing.

Algebrator

If you have any experience with programming, pm me so we can see if we can do something.

But from what I'm thinking, you're essentially looking for an AI that will recognize certain words and phrases and make sense of it.
It can be done to a good extent, but the amount of investment involved is not worth it. Such problems are too trivial to for it to be of economic value.

TheLordIsGr8:
If you have any experience with programming, pm me so we can see if we can do something.

But from what I'm thinking, you're essentially looking for an AI that will recognize certain words and phrases and make sense of it.
It can be done to a good extent, but the amount of investment involved is not worth it. Such problems are too trivial to for it to be of economic value.

Just what I thought. There's no incentive in solving word problems in algebra using NLP; the purpose of those problems is to teach the pupils to think, and there's no benefit in automating the process.
But it would be a nice project for learning NLP.

@asalimpo
I don't know of any such software existing; I think dhtml18 might know of one. FincoApps and larisoft are math enthusiasts too, so there.

unclezuma:
Algebrator

i dont think algebrator solves word problems.
I'm looking for something that can take word problems, convert them into equations and solve them.

Something that can be used with typical secondary school problems.
The process is mechanical and humans do it. So in this age of automation can and has the load been shifted to machines.
e.g.
here are some word problems in NGM ss1.


a)A car travels d km at an average speed of u km/h. How long does it take?

b) 110 members of a sports club play at least one of the games, football, basketball and volleyball.
If 20 play football and volleyball only, 26 play basketball and volleyball only, x play all the three games, 2x each play only one game, how many play basketball and volleyball together?

c) The three main parts of a calculator are the outercase,the lcd,and the electronic circuit.
The production costs of these parts are in the ratio 7:14:15 respectively. Calculate the costss of the lcds for 66 calculators that cost N1440 each to produce.

d)Anna has N30 and Ojo has N185. If Anna saves N5 a day and Ojo spends N7 a day, after how many days will they have equal amounts?

Craigston:

Just what I thought. There's no incentive in solving word problems in algebra using NLP; the purpose of those problems is to teach the pupils to think, and there's no benefit in automating the process.
But it would be a nice project for learning NLP.

@asalimpo
I don't know of any such software existing; I think dhtml18 might know of one. FincoApps and larisoft are math enthusiasts too, so there.

Yeah,it would be a nice process for learning NLP. is that the field for this kinda stuff?

I was thinking i'd find something online. Maybe for phones - android etc- Just to play with.
The complexity involved alone is insane!!.
But if it exists, bye bye assignments and brain cracking.
Just type in the assignment into the app. Tell it to show working. Hit 'solve' and bam.
copy the results into your exercise book and it's over!! easy A!

The language parsing aspects could be used other applications too:
e.g to read and process messages and automate responses.
Even carry out conversations.
e.g read an email, get the gist, forward the gist to the owner.
query databases without knowing sql.
e.g
a shop owner oversees monitoring his shop thru a saas software could say:
show me all sales for the day between 8am monday last week to date! :
tell me everytime a customer returns a defective good to the shop.
which day had the highest sales. Which day had the lowest.
how much sales were made when john was on shift?
does inventory match records on the books as it should?
produce a sales trend for the past 3 years by month.
Then the ultimated fuzzy query:
Software,How is business doing today?!

asalimpo:

i dont think algebrator solves word problems.
I'm looking for something that can take word problems, convert them into equations and solve them.

Something that can be used with typical secondary school problems.
The process is mechanical and humans do it. So in this age of automation can and has the load been shifted to machines.
e.g.
here are some word problems in NGM ss1.


a)A car travels d km at an average speed of u km/h. How long does it take?

b) 110 members of a sports club play at least one of the games, football, basketball and volleyball.
If 20 play football and volleyball only, 26 play basketball and volleyball only, x play all the three games, 2x each play only one game, how many play basketball and volleyball together?

c) The three main parts of a calculator are the outercase,the lcd,and the electronic circuit.
The production costs of these parts are in the ratio 7:14:15 respectively. Calculate the costss of the lcds for 66 calculators that cost N1440 each to produce.

d)Anna has N30 and Ojo has N185. If Anna saves N5 a day and Ojo spends N7 a day, after how many days will they have equal amounts?

You'd have to code the program yourself.

I pray for this forum

God bless you




(angel)(angel)(angel)(angel)(angel)

Can be done with javascript (regex) and some research rules you'd have to generate yourself.

This might inspire:

https://github.com/davolu/quesbot

It's an AI stuff that can read a text from articles/ebook.... and sets questions and answers based on the text in a quiz format.

it's possible, but it's not worth the stress.

asalimpo:
The language parsing aspects could be used other applications too:
e.g to read and process messages and automate responses.
Even carry out conversations.
e.g read an email, get the gist, forward the gist to the owner.
query databases without knowing sql.
e.g
a shop owner oversees monitoring his shop thru a saas software could say:
show me all sales for the day between 8am monday last week to date! :
tell me everytime a customer returns a defective good to the shop.
which day had the highest sales. Which day had the lowest.
how much sales were made when john was on shift?
does inventory match records on the books as it should?
produce a sales trend for the past 3 years by month.
Then the ultimated fuzzy query:
Software,How is business doing today?!

I see where you're going; that's the domain of AI (probably machine learning) and NLP. If you want to go into it, I'd encourage you sincerely. For now, my skills aren't up to it; I still have a long way to go, so I may not be of much help.
But the possible applications are many and diverse, and it can be disruptive in the way it can change businesses, education, industry, ...
Keep thinking, keep working. You have a sound mind, unlike some ponzi script retailers.

Eldergod:
it's possible, but it's not worth the stress.

I think it's worth doing. It presents an opportunity to learn so many interesting things. Forget the monetary incentives; the knowledge derivable is important and transferable across domains.

i would love to develop a software like this. the development process will be really interesting!

@Craigston
Thanks. I have no ai or math training myself. But for some1 like me to wade into a problem of this scope would result in a bruteforce application. However, anything that works will be a real encouragement.
I already see someways the a simple crude one could be made.

The premises are these:
English language has structure.
All the information needed is already in the sentences.

Humans use a similar process of inference that a computer uses, by just extracting the meaning from the text and using it. But the human method is very fast and very capable of understanding ambiguities.

e.g
in the question
Anna has N30 and Ojo has N185. If Anna saves N5 a day and Ojo spends N7 a day, after how many days will they have equal amounts?
The structure is :
<Sentence>.<Sentence>.
so a paragraph is a collection of sentences .
Sentences are space separated words ending with full stop/period.
if the first sentence is parsed,
you have
[Anna][has][N30][and][Ojo][has][N185].

has is a verb.
Anna is undefined. N30 is undefined. and is a joiner/conjunction.
has is a verb/action word.
N185 is undefined.
the parser sees 'has' and action word and infers that the word before it is an Object i.e a noun.
so it backtracks, then finds the type of the object 'Anna' it combs thru a dictionary no word matching that. It check names - it finds a match. Anna is a person- so the undefined word is now narrowed to a person type. Then it infers that it is a female.
from there it makes more sense of the action 'has' - it infers possession.
Using similar process it infers that N30 is currency. Then it infers that it is Nigeria.
Since it is money it infers it has the properties - comparable, addable, discrete, etc.
The process involves lot of searching of set of words and their types and deducing.
So i think a simple prototype can be built- but thing is even that simple prototype can take a lot of effort and time and resources but the learning from the process will be deep.
It will be equivalent to conducting an msc project or even a phd project work on it. because it could take years of time!!
No matter the solution, i think even ai needs a database of english words and their categorisation into types. No way i see of a program making sense of a string of text without hard coded initial type inference.
This is just my thoughts though.

asalimpo:
@Craigston
Thanks. I have no ai or math training myself. But for some1 like me to wade into a problem of this scope would result in a bruteforce application. However, anything that works will be a real encouragement.
I already see someways the a simple crude one could be made.

The premises are these:
English language has structure.
All the information needed is already in the sentences.

Humans use a similar process of inference that a computer uses, by just extracting the meaning from the text and using it. But the human method is very fast and very capable of understanding ambiguities.

e.g
in the question
Anna has N30 and Ojo has N185. If Anna saves N5 a day and Ojo spends N7 a day, after how many days will they have equal amounts?
The structure is :
<Sentence>.<Sentence>.
so a paragraph is a collection of sentences .
Sentences are space separated words ending with full stop/period.
if the first sentence is parsed,
you have
[Anna][has][N30][and][Ojo][has][N185].

has is a verb.
Anna is undefined. N30 is undefined. and is a joiner/conjunction.
has is a verb/action word.
N185 is undefined.
the parser sees 'has' and action word and infers that the word before it is an Object i.e a noun.
so it backtracks, then finds the type of the object 'Anna' it combs thru a dictionary no word matching that. It check names - it finds a match. Anna is a person- so the undefined word is now narrowed to a person type. Then it infers that it is a female.
from there it makes more sense of the action 'has' - it infers possession.
Using similar process it infers that N30 is currency. Then it infers that it is Nigeria.
Since it is money it infers it has the properties - comparable, addable, discrete, etc.
The process involves lot of searching of set of words and their types and deducing.
So i think a simple prototype can be built- but thing is even that simple prototype can take a lot of effort and time and resources but the learning from the process will be deep.
It will be equivalent to conducting an msc project or even a phd project work on it. because it could take years of time!!
No matter the solution, i think even ai needs a database of english words and their categorisation into types. No way i see of a program making sense of a string of text without hard coded initial type inference.
This is just my thoughts though.

You may not have to implement all that yourself. NLP libraries that work for conversational English language already exist; you might need to make modifications to one to help it parse Math word problems easily.
Remember it has to know about pronouns and correctly deduce which noun a pronoun substitutes.
Since you're focusing on a library for word problems, the space of cases you have to handle is reduced (still large, but not so much as a complete algebra library or some other beast), and once you get a working prototype, you can understand the problem better.

asalimpo:
@Craigston
Thanks. I have no ai or math training myself. But for some1 like me to wade into a problem of this scope would result in a bruteforce application. However, anything that works will be a real encouragement.
I already see someways the a simple crude one could be made.

The premises are these:
English language has structure.
All the information needed is already in the sentences.

Humans use a similar process of inference that a computer uses, by just extracting the meaning from the text and using it. But the human method is very fast and very capable of understanding ambiguities.

e.g
in the question
Anna has N30 and Ojo has N185. If Anna saves N5 a day and Ojo spends N7 a day, after how many days will they have equal amounts?
The structure is :
<Sentence>.<Sentence>.
so a paragraph is a collection of sentences .
Sentences are space separated words ending with full stop/period.
if the first sentence is parsed,
you have
[Anna][has][N30][and][Ojo][has][N185].

has is a verb.
Anna is undefined. N30 is undefined. and is a joiner/conjunction.
has is a verb/action word.
N185 is undefined.
the parser sees 'has' and action word and infers that the word before it is an Object i.e a noun.
so it backtracks, then finds the type of the object 'Anna' it combs thru a dictionary no word matching that. It check names - it finds a match. Anna is a person- so the undefined word is now narrowed to a person type. Then it infers that it is a female.
from there it makes more sense of the action 'has' - it infers possession.
Using similar process it infers that N30 is currency. Then it infers that it is Nigeria.
Since it is money it infers it has the properties - comparable, addable, discrete, etc.
The process involves lot of searching of set of words and their types and deducing.
So i think a simple prototype can be built- but thing is even that simple prototype can take a lot of effort and time and resources but the learning from the process will be deep.
It will be equivalent to conducting an msc project or even a phd project work on it. because it could take years of time!!
No matter the solution, i think even ai needs a database of english words and their categorisation into types. No way i see of a program making sense of a string of text without hard coded initial type inference.
This is just my thoughts though.

See.... I love people like you that act on problems and come up with solutions instead of using statements like "it's possible but it's not worth it" or "the economic values bla blah"..... or more annoying, the ones that completely rely on libraries like the creators of those libraries are Gods.

If the problem is too tough for them, why don't they just say it ?? instead of "the economic values bullshit"

That's one of the reasons I just left Nairaland.... the quantity of mouth here is too much

Anyway, Asalimpo, keep it up

asalimpo:
@Craigston
Thanks. I have no ai or math training myself. But for some1 like me to wade into a problem of this scope would result in a bruteforce application. However, anything that works will be a real encouragement.
I already see someways the a simple crude one could be made.

The premises are these:
English language has structure.
All the information needed is already in the sentences.

Humans use a similar process of inference that a computer uses, by just extracting the meaning from the text and using it. But the human method is very fast and very capable of understanding ambiguities.

e.g
in the question
Anna has N30 and Ojo has N185. If Anna saves N5 a day and Ojo spends N7 a day, after how many days will they have equal amounts?
The structure is :
<Sentence>.<Sentence>.
so a paragraph is a collection of sentences .
Sentences are space separated words ending with full stop/period.
if the first sentence is parsed,
you have
[Anna][has][N30][and][Ojo][has][N185].

has is a verb.
Anna is undefined. N30 is undefined. and is a joiner/conjunction.
has is a verb/action word.
N185 is undefined.
the parser sees 'has' and action word and infers that the word before it is an Object i.e a noun.
so it backtracks, then finds the type of the object 'Anna' it combs thru a dictionary no word matching that. It check names - it finds a match. Anna is a person- so the undefined word is now narrowed to a person type. Then it infers that it is a female.
from there it makes more sense of the action 'has' - it infers possession.
Using similar process it infers that N30 is currency. Then it infers that it is Nigeria.
Since it is money it infers it has the properties - comparable, addable, discrete, etc.
The process involves lot of searching of set of words and their types and deducing.
So i think a simple prototype can be built- but thing is even that simple prototype can take a lot of effort and time and resources but the learning from the process will be deep.
It will be equivalent to conducting an msc project or even a phd project work on it. because it could take years of time!!
No matter the solution, i think even ai needs a database of english words and their categorisation into types. No way i see of a program making sense of a string of text without hard coded initial type inference.
This is just my thoughts though.

For a start, the app could be made to focus on only one topic in either physics or mathematics, just so the developer would fully understand the working principle. Then in future updates, other topics and subjects may be incorporated.
I'd see what I can come up with before the month runs out.

asalimpo:
For personal use and it must work offline:
pc or android .
I want something that can solve algebra word problems.
better if open sourced too.
e.g
"A man is 20 years older than his son. if his son is 18 y.o how old is the man?".
Simple basic algebra word problem solver.
problems you'll find in a typical secondary school text book.
I was glancing thru a secondary school text when i had the idea that software could parse the questions and solve them. But a google search has yielded nothing.

Its a simple problem. Read up on tree data structure and binary three and binary search. I'll share my thoughts later as soon as I take a break from the task at hand. I will only share my thoughts with you after I confirm dt u understand trees; binary tree and binary search.

I like problems like this

Ok. Here we go.

You need to first develop a grammar for the application. It won't be a perfect grammar but will improve with time and experience.

Classify all the words of English language into parts such as

1.Noun, pronoun, adjective
2. verb,Adverb
3.preposition
4.conjunction
5.Determinants
6.Punctuations
7. Queries e.g What, How, when, where,calculate, determine,verify etc
8.Extents e.g long, short, far,last etc
9.Units eg. mm,cm,km, etc millimetre, centimetre, kilometer etc
10.Speeds, km/hr, mile/hr etc
11. Currency, naira,dollar,pond,etc ; symbols of currency,

Further divide punctuations to
1.Offsets e.g comma, semi-colon, Full-stop
2. Upsets e.g aprostrophe
3. Quotation consisting of Open-Quote,close quote


Make a list of of determinants
Make a list of punctuations.

Verbs will represent assignment or equal to.
Set apart nouns such as SUM,DIFFERENCE, PRODUCT

Next,
Identify numerals.

Next, categorize common problem types
1. Speed determination. Clue : km/hr, km, How fast, generally Speed characters infer speed determination; words such as travels, average speed moves,runs etc
2. Cost determination: Clue:Naira,kobo,pond,symbols of currency, How much, generally currency characters
3. Ratio determination: Clue: ratio (key word), What is the ratio of
3. Time determination: Clue: hour, minutes, seconds; days, years, months; how long, how many days, how many years
and so on and so forth
4. Distance determination: Clue km/hr, km, how far, words such as travels, average speed moves,runs etc
5. Object/Person/Noun Count determination: Clue How many + some noun

Next, categorize solution steps
1. Factorization
2. Expansion
3.Simplification
4. Evaluation
5. Equation
6. Assignment
7. multiplication
8. Division
9.exponetation
etc

NOTE: You must give you clues precedence i.e assign hierarchy within each group list with clues that contain a query having the highest heirachy.

Ok. Now lets attempt to solve a problem.

a)A car travels d km at an average speed of u km/h. How long does it take?

Step one, deduce problem type.
Clue:km,km/h, how long
Here we can readily see that this is either a speed problem or time problem.

But the clue phrase 'how long' which contains a query decides it is a time problem

Step two, strip off determinants
car travels d km at average speed of u km/h. How long does it take?,

Step three, break up into parts.

car travels d km at average speed of u km/h
How long does it take(contains a query,an adjective, two verbs and a preposition. It has no variable, so we ignore it( this is a typical tree operation)

Now we focus on the first part, and we see units km, and km/h.If we view this from the view point of clue phrase how long then we realise that all we need is to mulptiply u d and u that preceeds them.

so, finally if you break, the expression properly into a tree, you will find it easy to construct the solution.

Here, We are solving TIME problem(looking for time) and the appropriate solution step is multiplication.
So, we simply print

Let the time be X;

X = d * u
= some value(common time unit) hr;

Ok. I will stop here if I have time in the future I will attempt to solve another of the problems above.

I believe so far I have given you enough guidance to continue on your own.

You will need to write you own tree class and possible a binary tree class. Also you will need to find an algorithm that is best for searching your tree. Binary search will naturally suite the searching of a binary tree.

Thats all for now.

@QueryUnical,
that's Quite interesting,
Your First main paragraph is simply the summary of the app. "The Grammatical Expressions need not be Perfect".
True, and that's where Artificial Intelligence would come in.

QueryUnical:
Ok. Here we go.

You need to first develop a grammar for the application. It won't be a perfect grammar but will improve with time and experience.

Classify all the words of English language into parts such as

1.Noun, pronoun, adjective
2. verb,Adverb
3.preposition
4.conjunction
5.Determinants
6.Punctuations
7. Queries e.g What, How, when, where,calculate, determine,verify etc
8.Extents e.g long, short, far,last etc
9.Units eg. mm,cm,km, etc millimetre, centimetre, kilometer etc
10.Speeds, km/hr, mile/hr etc
11. Currency, naira,dollar,pond,etc ; symbols of currency,

Further divide punctuations to
1.Offsets e.g comma, semi-colon, Full-stop
2. Upsets e.g aprostrophe
3. Quotation consisting of Open-Quote,close quote


Make a list of of determinants
Make a list of punctuations.

Verbs will represent assignment or equal to.
Set apart nouns such as SUM,DIFFERENCE, PRODUCT

Next,
Identify numerals.

Next, categorize common problem types
1. Speed determination. Clue : km/hr, km, How fast, generally Speed characters infer speed determination; words such as travels, average speed moves,runs etc
2. Cost determination: Clue:Naira,kobo,pond,symbols of currency, How much, generally currency characters
3. Ratio determination: Clue: ratio (key word), What is the ratio of
3. Time determination: Clue: hour, minutes, seconds; days, years, months; how long, how many days, how many years
and so on and so forth
4. Distance determination: Clue km/hr, km, how far, words such as travels, average speed moves,runs etc
5. Object/Person/Noun Count determination: Clue How many + some noun

Next, categorize solution steps
1. Factorization
2. Expansion
3.Simplification
4. Evaluation
5. Equation
6. Assignment
7. multiplication
8. Division
9.exponetation
etc

NOTE: You must give you clues precedence i.e assign hierarchy within each group list with clues that contain a query having the highest heirachy.

Ok. Now lets attempt to solve a problem.

a)A car travels d km at an average speed of u km/h. How long does it take?

Step one, deduce problem type.
Clue:km,km/h, how long
Here we can readily see that this is either a speed problem or time problem.

But the clue phrase 'how long' which contains a query decides it is a time problem

Step two, strip off determinants
car travels d km at average speed of u km/h. How long does it take?,

Step three, break up into parts.

car travels d km at average speed of u km/h
How long does it take(contains a query,an adjective, two verbs and a preposition. It has no variable, so we ignore it( this is a typical tree operation)

Now we focus on the first part, and we see units km, and km/h.If we view this from the view point of clue phrase how long then we realise that all we need is to mulptiply u d and u that preceeds them.

so, finally if you break, the expression properly into a tree, you will find it easy to construct the solution.

Here, We are solving TIME problem(looking for time) and the appropriate solution step is multiplication.
So, we simply print

Let the time be X;

X = d * u
= some value(common time unit) hr;

Ok. I will stop here if I have time in the future I will attempt to solve another of the problems above.

I believe so far I have given you enough guidance to continue on your own.

You will need to write you own tree class and possible a binary tree class. Also you will need to find an algorithm that is best for searching your tree. Binary search will naturally suite the searching of a binary tree.

Thats all for now.

a car travelled at x km/hr for y miles. Deduce the length in time it took to reach its destination
Deduce/describe/compute - hacks to break the programme if it's not robust enough to handle it.
the question is same thing as saying "how long did it take".

QueryUnical:


Its a simple problem. Read up on tree data structure and binary three and binary search. I'll share my thoughts later as soon as I take a break from the task at hand. I will only share my thoughts with you after I confirm dt u understand trees; binary tree and binary search.

I like problems like this

At the bolded, how will you b able to CONFIRM my claim (of knowledge of trees) ? That statement is condescending to say the least.

asalimpo:


At the bolded, how will you b able to CONFIRM my claim (of knowledge of trees) ? That statement is condescending to say the least.

I admit dt it does sound so,but dt was nt d intentn.Apologies.I just felt u may not understand d solution if u do not understand trees.As u noticed I eventually posted sthg dt did not neccessarily require prior knowledge of trees.

I was expectg u do a qick read up on trees if u hadnt prior knowlege of it.All u needed to do was to tell I do know tree or i'll read up on tree first.

In any case, condescension was not d intentn.

asalimpo:


a car travelled at x km/hr for y miles. Deduce the length in time it took to reach its destination
Deduce/describe/compute - hacks to break the programme if it's not robust enough to handle it.
the question is same thing as saying "how long did it take".

Pardon me, but I dnt understand ds ur post. Is it a questn or what?

The above is just a guide. You are expected to fill in d gap.

Pls, notice dt I also said ur clues must have precedence.D clue with the highest precedence will be d determinant.

LordeCalifornia:
@QueryUnical,
that's Quite interesting,
Your First main paragraph is simply the summary of the app. "The Grammatical Expressions need not be Perfect".
True, and that's where Artificial Intelligence would come in.
I'd see if i can develop a mini version of the app before the month runs out. It would be fun to do this.

I dnt expect u to use ai.Jus update ur database of grammer with time, add robust exceptn handling.But, if u prefer to use ai no problem.What had in mind is sthg any programmer can qickly develop.But dn, ai will be the best approach.

Will share my thoughts on this later.

Pls anyone who used ds my approach shld acknowledge mebin dr source code using d phrase : Based on procudure proposed by nairalander QueryUnical.

TheLordIsGr8:
If you have any experience with programming, pm me so we can see if we can do something.

But from what I'm thinking, you're essentially looking for an AI that will recognize certain words and phrases and make sense of it.
It can be done to a good extent, but the amount of investment involved is not worth it. Such problems are too trivial to for it to be of economic value.

well said.

QueryUnical:


I admit dt it does sound so,but dt was nt d intentn.Apologies.I just felt u may not understand d solution if u do not understand trees.As u noticed I eventually posted sthg dt did not neccessarily require prior knowledge of trees.

I was expectg u do a qick read up on trees if u hadnt prior knowlege of it.All u needed to do was to tell I do know tree or i'll read up on tree first.

In any case, condescension was not d intentn.

ishorait. I actually reworded my post to highlight that particular characteristic. It was quite obvious; others may have noticed it too. You cudav presented your solution in two ways - in the undiluted way or in a watered down way. if it was in the hard way, the reader would ask for clarification on issues he didnt understand,
if it was in the watered down way, the reader will glide over the oversimplifications to get to the gist of the matter. Either way ,if the reader gave feedback,you could gauge his comprehension levels and adjust accordingly. If the reader claimed to know what concept you're talking about but was lying, you wouldnt know he's bluffing by going ahead to give ur explanation, so the only way you could know is from the feedback the reader gave.

QueryUnical:


Pardon me, but I dnt understand ds ur post. Is it a questn or what?

The above is just a guide. You are expected to fill in d gap.

Pls, notice dt I also said ur clues must have precedence.D clue with the highest precedence will be d determinant.

It's a question. I rephrased a question differently to show you anoda way a user may pose it to the system.
Ideally, such a program should be able to handle a bit of rephrasing without getting lost. But if that's too complex then a very strict phrasing may be the requirement but a robust program would be more intuitive and
useful.
Precedents,determinants? I dont understand what you're saying (or the terms). I'll re-read your posts again.

QueryUnical:


Its a simple problem. Read up on tree data structure and binary three and binary search. I'll share my thoughts later as soon as I take a break from the task at hand. I will only share my thoughts with you after I confirm dt u understand trees; binary tree and binary search.

I like problems like this

Sorry, sir this problem is'nt trivial at all.
I wont be suprised if the minimal code size runs into some very high figures.

What you have done is create a dsl version. But you're version isnt generic enough.
What i'm talking about is a program that could take the english language, take some rules,
then when presented with a query in the language,it will use the rules it was given to infer and deduce new information and answer problems.

Benefits: It would be more intuitive to people,especially people who fancy using the keyboard or text rather than graphic icons.

e.g
imagine a shop owner in the u.s, who wants to know how his business is doing in nigeria.
He logs into the software interface from his hotel room the enters the query - in english "How is sales today".
Just that.
Next, he queries "What about yesterday".
"Ok, give me a summary of sales for the past 2 months"

if you use a strict grammer, all parts of the grammer must be encoded.
e.g if "summary" isnt in the set,the program crashes.
But using a notional system,the app is to infer that summary means or belongs to certain classes of MEANING
i.e synonyms, then using that solve the problem.
i.e it doesnt use a strict grammer set, but rules.
summary is synonymous with : reduction, - (minus), no fluff, bare essentials, etc
for is synonymous with purpose,because,etc.
give - present, pass over, hand to, transfer

Mind you wolfram alpha - which is an answers engine- doesnt even compute
simple problems like this:
"A man is 20 years older than his son. if his son is 18 y.o how old is the man?"
The easiest part of the program is encoding all words in a standard english dictionary (assuming 35 000 words)
into their notional classes. i.e attaching an exhaustive notion set to every word.
That can take a single person over a year to just do that!


It's harder than it seems.

nice