Monday, August 25, 2008

Problem Statement

Transform a colloquial expression to its formal counterpart, and transform a formal expression to its colloquial counterpart.

Later scope: We can explore whether these transformations reveal new facts, or just make things easier to understand and communicate.

An issue: We need to be certain about which one of the many possible expressions we are going to transform a given expression into. For colloquial -> formal type transformations, it's probably the most informative one, and for reverse transformations, it's the expressions easiest to understand.

Since it is never easy to consolidate the notions of "most informative" and "easiest to understand", we may take a detour. For example, we can generate only that expression (or those expressions) which is (are) easiest for a computer to produce. Or we can also generate all possible expressions and leave the task of discrimination and sieving upon the user (or the software/program/module that'll make use of our code). However, it is a naive approach and may not be encouraged further.

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