A Note on Computer Experimentation

Computational experimentation has long played an essential role in the development of number theory. I will encourage you to use computers to explore some of the ideas we will discuss, by giving lectures on techniques for using computers to do experiments in number theory and creating homework problems that involve nontrivial computation.

Regarding actual software, I will primarily discuss the powerful and totally free open-source program PARI. You can download this program for Linux, MS Windows, and Mac from http://www.parigp-home.de.