uned sequences A071339 - A071341

[Marc LeBrun]

 >=David Wasserman
 > I would suggest deleting these three, but first I'll ask if anyone 
disagrees.

Please allow me to very respectfully disagree, in the strongest possible terms.

This issue arises periodically, in part as a natural consequence of the 
workload the OEIS entails.  However it strongly bears not only on the 
editorial burdens, but vitally on the ultimate long-term value of the OEIS.

As editors we should strive to improve accuracy, completeness, coherence, 
etc, but not drift into acting as gatekeepers, except where the utility of 
the OEIS would clearly be adversely impacted by a submission.

Bear in mind that the OEIS is *not* a journal, it's a reference database, 
and, moreover, one that is used by programs, such as superseeker, as well 
as humans.

As time passes, the frequency, depth and importance of these automated 
searches can only increase.  This has direct bearing on the "appreciation" 
of the investment people make by contributing to the OEIS.

Having lots of sequences can enable programs to mine very valuable results 
that we could not envision at the time of submission.

Conversely, "censored" sequences are often not likely to be effectively 
resynthesized by such tools, simply because there are so many viable forms 
such derivations might take.

The potential value of including a possibly marginal sequence greatly 
outweighs the slight incremental cost.  "A numbers" are not a scarce resource.

Therefore sequences should be rejected only for the very strongest reasons 
(such as errors, incomprehensible descriptions, etc).

It does not, however, seem sufficient grounds to reject a sequence simply 
because someone, with enough cleverness and insight, might able to derive 
it from another sequence.  This *is* a reasonable criteria for, say, a 
submitted journal article with a "trivial" or "known" result, but not the OEIS.

Indeed, there are a number of existing sequences that differ only by a 
single, arguable, boundary term, or by shifting offset or other simple 
variations.  Yet these details can make a critical difference in whether or 
not an automatic transform will be able to "hit" on interesting results in 
the future (eg consider how shifting the offset by one radically affects a 
Mobius transform, say).

The advertised goal of the OEIS is to include "ALL interesting 
sequences".  Evidently *someone* was interested enough to go to the trouble 
of submitting the sequence, manifestly so if they had to, say, write a 
program, or undertake some analysis, in order to generate the submitted 
information.  It is important to respect the submitters' level of interest 
and motivation, even when we aren't as enthusiastic ourselves.

Certainly there are "spam" sequences, or lunatic submissions, or cases 
where the submitter obviously got carried away using power tools to 
generate excessively many too-similar variants, or the like.  But these are 
pretty blatant.  If there's much room for reasonable people to disagree, a 
sequence really should be presumed acceptable, unless proven otherwise.

In this particular case, while I'd be happy to see the FORTRAN code 
sequestered off elsewhere under some link, all the submitted sequences look 
reasonable, and I believe their inclusion would enrich the "core" sequence 
A004018, as well as the OEIS as a whole.

Alas this doesn't ease the editorial burden while furthering this wonderful 
enterprise.  Your efforts are greatly appreciated.

Thanks!