Definition
Plain language
A small automated check that a single piece of code — or, here, a single definition — behaves the way it's supposed to.
As stated in the literature
A test asserting a property that should hold if a component is correct; in autoformalization, auxiliary lemmas serve as unit tests for a new formal definition, since a definition's meaning can't be checked by the compiler directly.
Also called: unit tests
Why it matters: It matters because these small checks catch broken behavior early, and can even verify a formal definition means what its author intended.
For example, a test might feed a sorting function an unsorted list and check that it comes back in order.
Heard on the show
“Everything here runs on tasks with a crisp, checkable answer — grade-school math, unit tests, boxed competition answers.”Episode 207 — An AI Graded Its Own Math Test 94 Percent — It Actually Scored 20