An analysis of errors in interactive proof attempts

The practical utility of interactive, user-guided, theorem proving depends on the design of good interaction environments, the study of which should b e grounded in methods of research into human-computer interaction (HCI). Th is paper discusses the relevance of classifications of programming errors d eveloped by the HCI community to the problem of interactive theorem proving . A new taxonomy of errors is proposed for interaction with theorem provers and its adequacy as a usability metric is assessed experimentally. (C) 200 0 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.