Order of returned sequences?

Gordon Royle gordon at csse.uwa.edu.au
Fri May 28 09:54:15 CEST 2004


How is the list of returned sequences determined if there are lots of 
matches?

For example, I wanted to find the sequence of (integer) partitions of a 
number, so I typed in the first few values

	1,2,3,5,7,11,15,22

and got a whole stack of "subsidiary" series that happen to coincide 
with the partition numbers for small values of n (eg partitions into at 
most 8 parts, partitions into at most 9 parts etc) - but I did not get 
the parititon numbers.

If, on the other hand, I entered

	1,2,3,5,7,11,15,22,30

then I got the "master sequence"  A000041, which is the partition 
numbers.


But why wasn't it picked up the first time?

Should it not be the case that more important sequences get returned 
*before* inferior sequences? Particularly when one of them is 
historically one of the most important sequences in the last few 
hundred years and the others are direct derivations from that sequence 
obtained by imposing an arbitrary restriction that surely appears 
infrequently if at all in actual problems - after all, what proportion 
of "partition" problems involve partitions into at most 8 parts?

Or even just return them in A-number order!







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