request for advice

[Henry Gould]

Dear Neil and everyone else,

Thus we have come again to that point that reminds me of the famous old 
problem of defining "interesting numbers". As we all should know, the 
difficulty is that ALL positive, real numbers are interesting. Indeed. 
consider the two sets A and B, where A is the set of all interesting 
positive numbers, and B is the set of all uninteresting positive, real 
numbers. Then, by the well-ordering principle, there is a smallest 
element in the set B, so that by the usual vague definition, then that 
smallest element has been misclassified and belongs in the set A. 
Repeating the process we soon realize that all positive, real numbers 
are interesting. Mutatis mutandis, we can make a proof that all 
sequences are ipso facto interesting. It will be very difficult to cull 
out "uninteresting" sequences.
Neil. as he continues to develop this super-exponentiating database, 
will become the Ramanujan of Sequences, the Man Who Knew All the 
Sequences! I think the same difficulty arises when we make a table of 
all interesting "whatevers".
I have been hesitant to send in what I believe are trivial and 
uninteresting sequences. yet understand fully that one Seqfan's junk is 
another Seqfan's golden nugget.
Good luck in getting a common ground.

Henry Gould



N. J. A. Sloane wrote:
> Dear seqfans and editors:
>
> There is a contributor to the OEIS who in the past has sent in some interesting
> sequences, but most of his submissions are to my mind not very interesting.
>
> Two or three weeks ago, finding that I was spending all my time
> processing his sequences, which were flooding the OEIS,
> (there were a huge number of them)
> I asked him never to send in further sequences.
>
> I felt that he was trying to make the OEIS look ridiculous.
>
> He has now resumed submissions.  His latest submissions are
> of the form:
>
> Numbers n such that n and 2n+1 belong to AXXXXXX.
>
> Of course there is the potential here for 100,000 new
> sequences.
>
> Then we can have
>
> Numbers n such that n and 2n-1 belong to AXXXXXX.,
>
> another 100,000, and then
>
> Numbers n such that n and n^2+1 belong to AXXXXXX.,
>
> another 100,000, and so on.
>
> My question is, would you please tell me what I should do?
>
> I will keep track of the number of replies that I get that say,
> this is just fine, accept them all
> and those that say
> enough already, pipe his submissions to /dev/null
>
> Thanks
>
> NJAS
>
>