old sequences

John Conway conway at math.Princeton.EDU
Sun Jan 23 23:32:38 CET 2000



On Sun, 23 Jan 2000, Michael Somos wrote or quoted:

> Dear SeqFans,
> 
>     Even though contributing new sequences is a popular activity,
> and it is certainly worth doing,...

   I am rather concerned about that.  New INTERESTING sequences are 
certainly worth contributing, but I fear that many of the new sequences 
being inserted now are just being invented for the sake of being 
contributed, and that this dilution of the machine version of the EIS is 
having some very bad effects.
   For instance, when I was showing it off to my son some time ago, I input 
quite a few terms of the Fibonacci sequence, for which it gave me ten
matches, none of which was the Fibonacci sequence!  One of them was
"Fibonacci numbers modulo 9", a sequence that I feel very strongly
shouldn't be there.
   I fear that if ther continues to be no control on the sequences inserted, 
the value of the system will only decline with time.

   John Conway





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