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OEIS funfacts

Some FUN facts about OEIS.

This program/website tells you some fun facts about OEIS. View the up-to-date version at https://benwiederhake.github.io/oeis-funfacts/.

Table of Contents

Install

You only need some Python3 installed somewhere.

You need to make sure the submodule is checked out, too. Ideally, clone using --recurse-submodules, like so:

$ git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/BenWiederhake/oeis-funfacts.git
$ cd oeis-funfacts/gh-pages
$ git checkout gh-pages # git is stupid

Usage

Just use it! No dependencies, and it's short enough.

The result will be written to index.html, which you can then publish/view/whatever.

You can also use the shell script to automatically pull the latest stripped.gz, build the website, and upload it to github.

Background

I came across a blog post claiming that 11630 was the First Uninteresting Number in June 2009. There are even some updates about how it it increased to 12407 in November 2009 and later to 14228 in November 2013. So naturally I wondered what the current lowest uninteresting number is.

Note that this is not a paradox, as the blog post confirms:

Update [June 13, 2009]: I got word back via e-mail today that this sequence didn't make the cut. So there you have it — these numbers truly are uninteresting.

;-)

Data source

I'm pleased that OEIS makes a simple version of its database readily available at https://oeis.org/stripped.gz. This file sometimes contains only a few terms, but usually still the first few "interesting" terms. ;-)

Curiously, the "how many terms" part is difficult to quantify, as there are some sequences with only one term, and also a sequence with 377 terms.

Also, all meta-information (author, context, formula, references, etc) is omitted, except the A number.

All this together means that stripped.gz is a handy about-40MB file that is a pleasure to work with.

TODOs

These are the things I'd like to do next:

  • Show it to some people
  • Maybe find even more interesting things to analyze in this data?

NOTDOs

Here are some things this project will definitely not support:

  • Graphing. I could only find Sloane's Gap, and promptly remembered Numberphile's video on it.
  • Automation outside of my own devices. I don't know how OEIS's bandwidth, and hence intend to update the website about once a month, at most.

License

To put it simply: If you ain't makin' money from it, you can do whatever you want. If you do make money from it, change the favico, and OEIS might want a share. (And I wouldn't mind a box of cereal, or whatever. I would be more interested in how the hell you monetized it, though.)

Contribute

Feel free to dive in! Open an issue or submit PRs.