« Classical Mechanics, Symplectic Geometry, Combinatorics
Classical Mechanics, Symplectic Geometry, Combinatorics
November 18, 2020, 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location:
Online Event
Robert Dougherty Bliss, Rutgers University
The well-exploited theory of SIMPLE continued fractions has produced some dazzling identities and wonderful irrationality proofs. The often-overlooked theory of GENERAL continued fractions is harder to champion, but just as, if not more, interesting. A recent project (viz. The Ramanujan Machine) tried to numerically "fit" general continued fractions to well-known constants, hoping to find very good rational approximations. To highlight the power of symbolic experimentation, I will tour us through automatically proving some of these conjectures and generalizing them to infinite families.