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The best description of the OEIS I've heard is by Donald Knuth in this fun talk (https://youtu.be/BxQw4CdxLr8 https://youtu.be/BxQw4CdxLr8) where at 19:50 he sa

by svat 6y ago

The best description of the OEIS I've heard is by Donald Knuth in this fun talk (https://youtu.be/BxQw4CdxLr8 https://youtu.be/BxQw4CdxLr8) where at 19:50 he says how it lets you "compute your way into the literature": > For the last 30 years or more, there has been a wonderful tool for all kinds of problems of this form and it's been online for a long time: we have the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. And this is just the nicest thing since sliced bread for mathematics because you can compute your way into the literature. [audience laughter] If you want to know if anybody else has ever studied a problem, all you have to do is evaluate the first few cases of it and then you look it up and there it is. The hit rate is incredible, and all kinds of mathematicians have discovered each other through the OEIS. […] I donate to Wikipedia and the Internet Archive and the OEIS. (Aside: A good blog post about that lecture: https://thenewstack.io/donald-knuths-christmas-tree-lecture-addresses-curious-problem-combinatorial-geometry/ https://thenewstack.io/donald-knuths-christmas-tree-lecture-...) Indeed I've used it this way many times; the most recent example is that I became curious about how many polynomial functions there are mod n (after posting this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26482028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26482028), and by computing the answers for n up to 10, I was able to look up up those numbers in the OEIS and find the general formula, and also the relevant papers. (Asked a question about it here: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/4070051/how-many-distinct-polynomials-are-there-mod-n https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/4070051/how-many-di... but ended up answering it myself…) I don't think I'd have even known where to look (as I'm not a professional mathematician), if not for the OEIS. And this happens again and again.

bjoli 6y ago
I have answered more than a few "what does this code do?" by just doing that. Feed the code some numbers, look for the output in oeis and bam! Instant guru status.
- sn9 6y ago
  What were the contexts in which you needed to examine a sequence of numbers transformed through a bit of code? I'm assuming it's something more niche than CRUD development. (I'm just curious, but would understand if it's something you can't talk about.)
  - bjoli 6y ago
    It is less exciting than you think. I am not a programmer by profession. One example is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/scheme/comments/k3b3hg/need_a_little_help_to_understand_what_this/ https://www.reddit.com/r/scheme/comments/k3b3hg/need_a_littl... I have other more recent (and better) examples, but most are in closed forums or IRC l.

by svat 6y ago

bjoli 6y ago

I have answered more than a few "what does this code do?" by just doing that. Feed the code some numbers, look for the output in oeis and bam! Instant guru status.

sn9 6y ago
What were the contexts in which you needed to examine a sequence of numbers transformed through a bit of code? I'm assuming it's something more niche than CRUD development. (I'm just curious, but would understand if it's something you can't talk about.)
- bjoli 6y ago
  It is less exciting than you think. I am not a programmer by profession. One example is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/scheme/comments/k3b3hg/need_a_little_help_to_understand_what_this/ https://www.reddit.com/r/scheme/comments/k3b3hg/need_a_littl... I have other more recent (and better) examples, but most are in closed forums or IRC l.