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Experimental Mathematics (journal)

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Experimental Mathematics
DisciplineExperimental mathematics
LanguageEnglish
Edited byAlexander Kasprzyk
Publication details
History1992–present
Publisher
Frequencyquarterly
0.659 (2019)
Standard abbreviations
ISO 4Exp. Math.
Indexing
ISSN1058-6458 (print)
1944-950X (web)
LCCN2003242218
OCLC no.24346305
Links

Experimental Mathematics is a quarterly scientific journal of mathematics published by A K Peters, Ltd. until 2010, now by Taylor & Francis. The journal publishes papers in experimental mathematics, broadly construed. The journal's mission statement describes its scope as follows: "Experimental Mathematics publishes original papers featuring formal results inspired by experimentation, conjectures suggested by experiments, and data supporting significant hypotheses."[1] Its editor-in-chief is Alexander Kasprzyk (University of Nottingham).

History

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Experimental Mathematics was established in 1992 by David Epstein, Silvio Levy, and Klaus Peters.[2] Experimental Mathematics was the first mathematical research journal to concentrate on experimental mathematics and to explicitly acknowledge its importance for mathematics as a general research field. The journal's launching was described as "something of a watershed".[3] Indeed, the launching of the journal in 1992 was surrounded by some controversy in the mathematical community about the value and validity of experimentation in mathematical research.[3][4] Some critics of the new journal suggested that it be renamed as the "Journal of Unproved Theorems".[5][6] In a 1995 article in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, in part responding to such criticism, Epstein and Levy described the journal's aims as follows:[7]

But the main difference reflects the philosophy above: we are interested not only in theorems and proofs but also in the way in which they have been or can be reached. Note that we do value proofs: experimentally inspired results that can be proved are more desirable than conjectural ones. However, we do publish significant conjectures or explorations in the hope of inspiring other, perhaps better-equipped researchers to carry on the investigation. The objective of Experimental Mathematics is to play a role in the discovery of formal proofs, not to displace them.

Despite the initial controversy, Experimental Mathematics quickly established a solid reputation and is now a highly respected mathematical publication. The journal is reviewed cover-to-cover in Mathematical Reviews and Zentralblatt MATH and is indexed in the Web of Science.

References

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  1. ^ Statement of Philosophy & Publishing Criteria. Experimental Mathematics
  2. ^ Foreword Archived 2008-04-21 at the Wayback Machine by Igor Rivin, Colin Rourke and Caroline Series. Epstein birthday schrift. Geometry & Topology Monographs, vol. 1. Geometry & Topology Publications, Coventry, 1998. doi:10.2140/gtm.1998.1
  3. ^ a b James Robert Brown. Philosophy of Mathematics: Introduction to a World of Proofs and Pictures. Taylor & Francis, 1999. ISBN 978-0-415-12274-0; pages 186–187.
  4. ^ William Bown. New-wave mathematics: A new generation of mathematicians is rebelling against the ancient tradition of theorem and proof.New Scientist. August 3, 1991
  5. ^ Ursula Martin. Computers, Reasoning and Mathematical Practice. Computational Logic: Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Computational Logic, Held in Marktoberdorf, Germany, July 29 – August 10, 1997. (U. Berger and H. Schwichtenberg, editors), pp. 301–346. Springer-Verlag, New York, 1999. ISBN 978-3-540-64589-4; page 326.
  6. ^ J. Horgan, The death of proof, Scientific American, Vol. 269 (1993), Issue 4, pp. 92–103
  7. ^ David Epstein and Silvio Levy. Experimentation and Proof in Mathematics. Notices of the American Mathematical Society. vol. 42 (1995), no. 6, pp. 670–674
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