Virtual worlds as meeting places for formal systems

Over the last seven years, we have been exploring the use of collaborative virtual environments called Virtual Worlds (VWs) as a new type of testbed f or experimenting with ways of organizing and integrating diverse types of c omputational and human processes. In other papers, we have discussed a wide variety of applications to fields as diverse as education and software eng ineering. In this paper, we focus on some of the mathematical experiments w e are currently building in these environments. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science I nc. All rights reserved.