Center for Experimental Mathematics

History

The Centre for Experimental Mathematics (CEM) in the Department of Mathematical Sciences focuses on fundamental mathematical research that gets inspiration from, or makes use of computers. The centre was led by Professor Helmut Prodinger, a profound expert of experimental mathematics, until his retirement in 2020. During this time, CEM has aided in establishing successful collaboration with similar institutions world-wide, through joint research projects, exchange of researchers and students, as well as jointly organized research seminars and conferences.

Objectives

New mathematical insights are often arrived to by observing common patterns across different examples. While the process of noticing a pattern is highly creative, the process of generating examples is much less so. With the help of computers, it often becomes possible to create large data of examples, a human examination of which leads to new original mathematical ideas. This gives a quite wide (but not all-inclusive) summary of what experimental mathematics is about. The centre serves as a platform for facilitating creative interaction of local and international students and researchers across different disciplines of mathematics that make use of computer-based experimental methods.

Contact details

For more information, contact Prof Zurab Janelidze (zurab@sun.ac.za), Dr Riana Roux (rianaroux@sun.ac.za), or Prof Brink van der Merwe (abvdm@sun.ac.za).

Virtual meeting space

The website of the centre is currently under construction. In the meantime, the centre runs its activities from the virtual space of Microsoft Teams: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/team/19%3ae20731845f394dc6859f93d68474f971%40thread.tacv2/conversations?groupId=e38cfbae-0678-40ee-818c-9c715e9ca008&tenantId=a6fa3b03-0a3c-4258-8433-a120dffcd348