Experimental Mathematics via Inverse Symbolic Computation

Abstract. In previous centuries, experimentation in mathematics was mostly limited to trial and error hand-calculuation. With the advent of digital (and now molecular!) computers, a revolution is taking place in how mathematicians go about their work.

A whole new palette of tools is available to the researcher; and as the sophistication of tools continues to increase, a threshold is reached, beyond which mathematicians see a qualitative shift in the kind of mathematics they can do. In this talk, I will give an outline of some of the more recent advances in inverse symbolic computation, and how they have affected my work.