2 HN users recommended this explainer2 months2013–2019score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN recommends it as a concise, quick explanation of the OEIS pattern when threads touch the integer sequence encyclopedia.
A Numberphile video with Dr James Grime on Sloane's Gap, the observation that integers in the OEIS are not evenly represented and some numbers are underrepresented. It explains the clusters of 'interesting' numbers.
“Very good video on Sloane's Gap, for the impatient” (HN, 2013)
Background on the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences: [link] Very good video on Sloane's Gap, for the impatient: [this video] The article is particularly interesting to me for it's examination of what complexity theory tells us to expect for the distribution of 'interesting' integer sequences. That cultural influences can (probably) have such a dramatic and measurable effect on something like mathematics is fascinating as well.
Well the first number that doesn't appear in OEIS is 18159. That make it interesting to me , but apparently this number isn't interesting to mathematicians. Of course since OEIS is finite, there will always be numbers which don't make it. What's really interesting is that some numbers are disproportionately underrepresented. They appear much less often than other numbers of the same size. And if you plot each number by the number of times it occurs, it makes a really interesting pattern: [this video]
Plot revealing underrepresented numbers in the OEIS
When you plot the "importance" N(n) of the positive integers, where N(n) = The number of occurrences of n in the OEIS an interesting anomaly appears[1]. The "importance" of the integers fall into two clusters, separated by Sloane's Gap [2][3]. Also, Neil Sloane appeared[4] several times on Numberphile. In the last few videos of that[4] playlist ("Amazing Graphs"), Sloane shares some of the particularly interesting sequences from the OEIS. [1] [link] [2] [link] [3] [this video] [4] [link]
Explains the gap between clusters of integer importance
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