Sequence and first differences together list all positive numbers exactly once
andersource
4 days ago
55
22
https://oeis.org/A005228
8organicbits7 hours ago
OEIS is such a wonderful reference. I've had occasions where software I was building needed to compute certain sequences, but I hadn't yet figured out the underlying math. I popped the sequence into OEIS and found the closed form solution. It was a huge productivity boost.
nurettin8organicbits6 hours ago
For me it was a favorite place to visit every so often. I also really enjoyed mathworld.wolfram.com a few decades ago. (A true shame that he went insane)
volemonurettin4 hours ago
> A true shame that he went insane

Could you elaborate on your reasons for calling Eric Weisstein insane?

Rexxarvolemoan hour ago
He probably intends to call Stephen Wolfram like that. But it's ridiculous to call him insane because he seems a little obsessed by cellular automatons.
nurettinvolemo15 minutes ago
Weisstein is amazing. Wolfram has the "unified theory of everything" disease. So much so that he sponsored dozens of youtube channels to talk about it.
foodevlnurettin4 hours ago
I don't know (and don't need you to elaborate on) exactly what you're referring to in that last sentence, but I suspect you are confusing Eric W. Weisstein with Eric Weisstein.
quietbritishjimfoodevl4 hours ago
More likely he's confusing the mathworld author with Stephen Wolfram
lutuspnurettinan hour ago
> A true shame that he went insane

I assume you're referring to Stephen Wolfram, not Neil Sloane, but it seems many people would like clarification.

As to Wolfram, assuming this is your focus, nothing undermines one's sanity as reliably as complete success. Not to accept your premise, only to explain it.

HocusLocus7 hours ago
Like 'even and odd' on steroids.
kleiba6 hours ago
Coding exercise: write a function

    boolean isInSequence(n):
that decides whether the given integer is part of that sequence or not. However, pre-storing the sequence and only performing a lookup is not allowed.
rokobkleiba4 hours ago
return n >= 0
r0uv3nrokob4 hours ago
2 for example is not in the sequence. Remember that you need the first differences to this sequence to obtain all natural numbers
rokobr0uv3n3 hours ago
Hah oh right duh
vbezhenarkleiba4 hours ago
Compute the sequence until you get n or m > n?
haskellshillkleiba3 hours ago
How about the following Haskell program?

    rec ((x:xs),p) = (filter (/= p+x) xs,p+x)
    sequ = map snd $ iterate rec ([2..],1)
sequ is an infinite list of terms of the sequence A005228.
sltkrhaskellshill2 hours ago
That just enumerates the entire sequence; I think the challenge is to do it faster than that.

By the way, the use of `filter` makes your implementation unnecessarily slow. (The posted link also contains Haskell code, which uses `delete` from Data.List instead of `filter`, which is only slightly better.)

I'd solve it like this, which generates both sequences in O(n) time, and the mutual recursion is cute:

    a005228 = 1 : zipWith (+) a005228 a030124

    a030124 = go 1 a005228 where
        go x ys
            | x < head ys = x     : go (x + 1) ys
            | otherwise   = x + 1 : go (x + 2) (tail ys)
asboanskleiba3 hours ago
I don’t know but I think I could probably implement IsInSequenceOrFirstDifferences(n)
cluckindan5 hours ago
Recursive (n choose 2) is my favorite.

https://oeis.org/A086714

If you think about it, it quantifies emergence of harmonic interference in the superposition of 4 distinct waveforms. If those waveforms happen to have irrational wavelengths (wrt. each other), their combination will never be in the same state twice.

This obviously has implications for pseudorandomness, etc.

OscarCunningham4 hours ago
Is there a sequence where the sequence and all its differences contain each positive integer once?

Something like

    1 3 9   26  66
     2 6  17  40
      4 11  23
       7  12
        5
Oh, here it is: https://oeis.org/A035313
vishnugupta2 hours ago
Can someone please explain this to me? I tried to make sense but couldn’t.
Horffupoldevishnugupta2 hours ago
The sequence union the differences span all integer values.
munchlervishnugupta2 hours ago
The initial sequence is 1, 3, 7, 12, 18, 26, 35, etc. The difference between each term in that sequence produces a second sequence: 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, etc. If you merge those two sequences together in sorted order, you get 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc. Each whole number appears in the result exactly once.