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“A Handbook of Integer Sequences” Fifty Years Later

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Re: “A Handbook of Integer Sequences” Fifty Years Later

#21
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, written in Go. There's a mildly humorous "How do you know" exchange where someone on HN quizzes the very person most likely to know: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9920020

HN has had a couple of those.

Mandatory HN lore https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

Re: “A Handbook of Integer Sequences” Fifty Years Later

#22
post #21
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN has had a couple of those.

Mandatory HN lore https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

That was one of the ones I had in mind. What's really neat is that everybody from that thread is still visiting HN and participating.

Re: “A Handbook of Integer Sequences” Fifty Years Later

#23
post #3

The OEIS lives here: https://oeis.org/ Super useful resource.

OEIS foundation: http://oeisf.org/ It's nice to see they have a solid plans on how to keep the website running indefinitely.

The one thing I wish is they had a keyword for base-ten related sequences (rather than only "base" for any base), because base ten related sequences simply are almost always going to be way more recreational maths related than base two or base three related sequences.

Re: “A Handbook of Integer Sequences” Fifty Years Later

#24

>"My fascination with these sequences began in 1964 when I was a graduate student at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, studying neural networks. I had encountered a sequence of numbers, 1, 8, 78, 944, 13800, . . ., and I badly needed a formula for the n-th term, in order to determine the rate of growth of the terms..." Related Mathologer video: Mathologer - "Why don't they teach Newton's calculus of 'What comes next?…

The finite difference method of that video is only useful for finding polynomial sequences. Of course, any finite sequence can be extended to some polynomial, but in many cases (such as this one) that’s not the result you’re looking for.

Specifically, in this case, why isn't it?

Re: “A Handbook of Integer Sequences” Fifty Years Later

#25
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always have a need to use this on puzzle hunts, but I don't think it ever helped.

Quick: 2, 8, 18, 32, ?? ?

11 distinct answers on OEIS, assuming the 2 is either the first value, or you omitted an initial 0.

Which were you thinking of?

Re: “A Handbook of Integer Sequences” Fifty Years Later

#27
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick: 2, 8, 18, 32, ?? ?

11 distinct answers on OEIS, assuming the 2 is either the first value, or you omitted an initial 0. Which were you thinking of?

The 2 is the first value. And no spoilers.

Re: “A Handbook of Integer Sequences” Fifty Years Later

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The finite difference method of that video is only useful for finding polynomial sequences. Of course, any finite sequence can be extended to some polynomial, but in many cases (such as this one) that’s not the result you’re looking for.

Specifically, in this case, why isn't it?

Because this sequences isn't polynomial. It's https://oeis.org/A000435 , with the explicit formula

   a(n) = (n-1)! * Sum_{k=0..n-2} n^k/k!
and the approximate form shows it's grows roughly as n^n:

   a(n) ~ sqrt(Pi/2)*n^(n-1/2)
Here's my Python implementation:

  from math import factorial
  from fractions import Fraction as F

  def A000435(n):
    return int(factorial(n-1) *
         sum(F(n**k, factorial(k)) for k in range(0, n-1)))
The video you linked to is on OEIS at https://oeis.org/A000127 and is a quartic:

  def A000127(n):
    return (n**4 - 6*n**3 + 23*n**2 - 18*n + 24)//24

Re: “A Handbook of Integer Sequences” Fifty Years Later

#30

>"My fascination with these sequences began in 1964 when I was a graduate student at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, studying neural networks. I had encountered a sequence of numbers, 1, 8, 78, 944, 13800, . . ., and I badly needed a formula for the n-th term, in order to determine the rate of growth of the terms..." Related Mathologer video: Mathologer - "Why don't they teach Newton's calculus of 'What comes next?…

The finite difference method of that video is only useful for finding polynomial sequences. Of course, any finite sequence can be extended to some polynomial, but in many cases (such as this one) that’s not the result you’re looking for.

https://johndonleyva.tripod.com/DifferenceTables.htm

> Robert Jackson suggests that if you've completed a difference table and still don't understand the sequence, you should turn the paper through an angle of 60 degrees, say, and start again and perhaps repeat this several times to make a fan of difference tables.

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