Mathematical-expressions-based knowledge discovery method and its application in verification of incompatibility of water and fire

摘要

It is well known that water and fire is incompatible, which is described by a Chinese idiom. Because Chinese character is an ideographic and pictographic character, we try to derive this law from the knowledge of the structure of Chinese characters. By analyzing the structure of Chinese characters deeply, we will present a novel mathematical expression method of a Chinese character briefly. Useful knowledge can be mined from the database of the mathematical expressions of all the Chinese characters. Our experimental results show that the probability of both the component 'water' and the component 'fire' appeared in a Chinese character simultaneously is very small. And even if the two components appear in a character simultaneously, we can see from the figure of the character that 'water' will boil and overflow if fire is burning. Thus, our experimental results can give a reasonable explanation to the idiom 'water and fire is Incompatible'.