Are A055999 and A074171 somehow the same?

[Alonso Del Arte]

I think that if we can prove that A055999 and A074171 are the same
(except for the two initial terms), then the two sequences should be
merged, with "a(n)=n*(n+7)/2" as the primary definition; and "Start
with 1, add the next number if one gets a prime then subtract the next
number else add the next" as a comment.

But what holds me back from asserting this is that I don't know how to
prove they are in fact the same. I have calculated a couple dozen more
terms for both and they agree, but I could calculate a million terms
and still stop short of the term that proves the two sequences are in
fact different.

Alonso del Arte


On Tue, 5 Oct 2004 14:05:08 +0200 (CEST), Michele Dondi
<blazar at pcteor1.mi.infn.it> wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Oct 2004, Dean Hickerson wrote:
> 
> > Michele Dondi asked:
> >
> >> Why? After all isn't OEIS supposed to be a comprehensive encyclopedia of
> >> integer sequences?
> >
> > No.  Such an encyclopedia would be uncountably infinite.  The OEIS is only
> > supposed to contain sequences which are useful or interesting.  This
> 
> Of course! Now incidentally this raises another question: are sequences
> which are useful or interesting finite? Are they countable?
> 
> > sequence is a trivial variation on a sequence that's already in the OEIS.
> > If the sequence entry were clear and correct, then I'd be inclined to leave
> > it in, since it was, at least momentarily, of interest to at least one
> > person.  But the description was unclear, and would require some editor to
> > fix it.  I think that would be a waste of the editor's time.
> 
> I see your point... I must admit that I hadn't read you message carefully
> enough and I hadn't understood that the description was not clear enough
> for OEIS.
> 
> Michele
> --
> : I'm about to learn myself perl6 (after using perl5 for some time).
> I'm also trying to learn perl6 after using perl5 for some time.  :-)
> - Larry Wall in perl6-language ML, 9 Jul 2004
>