Experimental Mathematics

期刊简介：Experimental Mathematics publishes original papers featuring formal results inspired by experimentation, conjectures suggested by experiments, and data supporting significant hypotheses.Experiment has always been, and increasingly is, an important method of mathematical discovery. (Gauss declared that his way of arriving at mathematical truths was "through systematic experimentation.") Yet this tends to be concealed by the tradition of presenting only elegant, fully developed, and rigorous results.Experimental Mathematics was founded in the belief that theory and experiment feed on each other, and that the mathematical community stands to benefit from a more complete exposure to the experimental process. The early sharing of insights increases the possibility that they will lead to theorems: An interesting conjecture is often formulated by a researcher who lacks the techniques to formalize a proof, while those who have the techniques at their fingertips have been looking elsewhere. Even when the person who had the initial insight goes on to find a proof, a discussion of the heuristic process can be of help, or at least of interest, to other researchers. There is value not only in the discovery itself, but also in the road that leads to it.

【译文】《实验数学》发表以实验启发的形式结果、由实验提出的猜想以及支持重要假设的数据的原创论文。实验一直是，并且越来越是数学发现的重要方法。（高斯曾宣称他得出数学真理的方法是“通过系统的实验”。）然而，这种做法往往被只展示优雅、完全发展和严谨的结果的传统所掩盖。《实验数学》的创立基于这样一个信念：理论和实验相互滋养，数学界将从更全面地接触实验过程而受益。早期分享的见解增加了它们可能导致定理的可能性：一个有趣猜想通常是由一个缺乏形式化证明技术的研究员提出的，而那些手头有技术的人却在寻找其他地方。即使最初有洞察力的人继续找到证明，讨论启发式过程也可能对其他研究人员有所帮助，或者至少是有趣的。不仅发现本身有价值，而且通往发现的道路也有价值。