A Mobile Application for Self-Guided Study of Formal Reasoning

TL;DR

AXolotl is an Android app designed to help students learn formal reasoning through guided, error-minimized exercises with a visual proof viewer and expandable problem library.

Contribution

This paper introduces AXolotl, a novel mobile application that simplifies formal reasoning study with touch interface and error prevention, supporting educational scenarios from propositional to first-order logic.

Findings

Supports basic formal reasoning problems on Android devices.

Includes a zoomable proof viewer and proof storage features.

Lays groundwork for future extensions to more complex logic rules.

Abstract

In this work, we introduce AXolotl, a self-study aid designed to guide students through the basics of formal reasoning and term manipulation. Unlike most of the existing study aids for formal reasoning, AXolotl is an Android-based application with a simple touch-based interface. Part of the design goal was to minimize the possibility of user errors which distract from the learning process. Such as typos or inconsistent application of the provided rules. The system includes a zoomable proof viewer which displays the progress made so far and allows for storage of the completed proofs as a JPEG or LaTeX file. The software is available on the google play store and comes with a small library of problems. Additional problems may be opened in AXolotl using a simple input language. Currently, AXolotl supports problems that can be solved using rules which transform a single expression into a set of expressions. This covers educational scenarios found in our first-semester introduction to logic course and helps bridge the gap between propositional and first-order reasoning. Future developments will include rewrite rules which take a set of expressions and return a set of expressions, as well as a quantified first-order extension.