A003682 - possible explanations and philosophical rant

[Ralf Stephan]

> (3) The comment "a(2) to a(47) are given by n^2-n+2" is odd, because  
> the original paper (by Faase) gives a recurrence for the numbers, which  
> indeed has this as its solution... so maybe the comment could be  
> upgraded to a "formula".

There are a lot of conjectural statements in the OEIS, my guess is
a number of about 3-4000 (yes I tried to count them). I think the
original commentator was lacking either the patience to find the
recurrence, or the knowledge to map it to the formula, at the time (1999!).
Later, it was me who added the 'Equals A002061 + 1' but did not
remove the comment. This, actually, happens often, that strata of
information are piled on top of strata. Oddities, maybe, but normal
for the OEIS, and other databases beyond a certain point, I'd say.
Decades ago, Stanislav Lem prophecized the gravitational collapse of 
information and called it the 'megabit bomb'; we now know better:
it simply rots and becomes odd.


ralf