I once took a course on "Experimental mathematics" and it was one of the best classes ive taken. Traditionally mathematicians have focused on getting good at p

I once took a course on "Experimental mathematics" and it was one of the best classes ive taken. Traditionally mathematicians have focused on getting good at proving theorems, which is important but boring. The idea behind the class was that finding interesting conjectures is actually much more important to advanced math research. The class relied heavily on computer-aided techniques to run simulations and search for interesting patterns. In my final project i played conways game of life on different sized universes with different boundary conditions and surveyed the kinds of stable cyclical patterns that could emerge. People who were math majors were doing more rigorous stuff i couldn't explain.