# Introducing MathQA -- A Math-Aware Question Answering System

## TL;DR

This paper introduces MathQA, an open source math-aware question answering system that generates mathematical formulas from natural language questions and computes results, outperforming a commercial engine in a user study.

## Contribution

The paper presents a novel open source system integrating Wikidata and SymPy to answer math questions in natural language, with a focus on formula extraction and computation.

## Key findings

- System outperformed commercial engine by 13% in user study.
- 80% of formula suggestions for Wikidata edits were correct.
- Performance depends on the quality and quantity of formula data in Wikidata.

## Abstract

We present an open source math-aware Question Answering System based on Ask Platypus. Our system returns as a single mathematical formula for a natural language question in English or Hindi. This formulae originate from the knowledge-base Wikidata. We translate these formulae to computable data by integrating the calculation engine sympy into our system. This way, users can enter numeric values for the variables occurring in the formula. Moreover, the system loads numeric values for constants occurring in the formula from Wikidata. In a user study, our system outperformed a commercial computational mathematical knowledge engine by 13%. However, the performance of our system heavily depends on the size and quality of the formula data available in Wikidata. Since only a few items in Wikidata contained formulae when we started the project, we facilitated the import process by suggesting formula edits to Wikidata editors. With the simple heuristic that the first formula is significant for the article, 80% of the suggestions were correct.