Abstract

Inequalities involving functions such as sines, exponentials and logarithms lie outside the scope of decision procedures, and can only be solved using heuristic methods. Preliminary investigations suggest that many such problems can be solved by reduction to algebraic inequalities, which can then be decided by a decision procedure for the theory of real closed fields (RCF). The reduction involves replacing each occurrence of a function by a lower or upper bound (as appropriate) typically derived from a power series expansion. Typically this requires splitting the domain of the function being replaced, since most bounds are only valid for specific intervals. 1

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