Experimental Mathematics (journal)

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).

Experimental Mathematics

Discipline	Experimental mathematics
Language	English
Edited by	Alexander Kasprzyk
Publication details
History	1992–present
Publisher	Taylor & Francis
Frequency	quarterly
Impact factor	0.659 (2019)
Standard abbreviations ISO 4 (alt) · Bluebook (alt) NLM (alt) · MathSciNet (alt )
ISO 4	Exp. Math.
Indexing CODEN (alt · alt2) · JSTOR (alt) · LCCN (alt) MIAR · NLM (alt) · Scopus · W&L
ISSN	1058-6458 (print) 1944-950X (web)
LCCN	2003242218
OCLC no.	24346305
Links
Journal homepage

History

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.