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Formalizing Numerical Analysis: An Agent Pipeline and Quality Audit Beyond Kernel Acceptance

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Recent work has demonstrated that coding agents can formalize entire advanced mathematics textbooks in Lean 4, yet existing efforts concentrate on branches of mathematics already well-represented in mathlib and measure success solely through kernel acceptance. We address both limitations by applying a coding agent to formalize Numerical Methods for Ordinary Differential Equations, a textbook in numerical analysis that is largely absent from mathlib, stressing the agent's capacity to develop new theory from scratch. We further introduce a systematic, reproducible three-dimensional framework for evaluating the quality of agent-produced formalizations beyond compilation: semantic correctness, Mathlib reuse, and cross-file reuse via LLM-as-judge methods. Applying this framework to our own formalization and to the released outputs of RepoProver and M2F, we uncover recurring unfaithful formalization patterns, including incomplete multi-part statements, added weakening hypotheses, and parameter restrictions, that kernel acceptance entirely obscures. Our results suggest that compilation-based metrics substantially overstate formalization quality, and we provide a reproducible audit methodology to support more rigorous evaluation of future autoformalization systems.

Theodore Meek, Siyuan Ge, Di Qiu Xiang, Simon Chess, Vasily Ilin• 2026

Related benchmarks

TaskDatasetResultRank
Cross-file dependency reuse analysisRepoProver
Formalization-reflected Edges1.16e+3
4
Cross-file dependency reuse analysisOpenMath
Formalization-reflected Edges16
3
Formal Proof CompletionButcher textbook Numerical Methods for Ordinary Differential Equations
Sorries0.00e+0
3
Library Overlap AnalysisMathlib
Overlap4
3
Semantic Correctness EvaluationOpenMath
Faithfulness54
2
Semantic Correctness EvaluationM2F
Faithfulness73
2
Semantic Correctness EvaluationRepoProver
Faithfulness82
2
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