OEIS summer rules

[Jonathan Post]

I respect Neil's summer plans.  I've just completed a year of teaching
and a quarter of grad courses.  But I have questions for
clarification.

"Do send important new sequences and comments, especially
sequences that are in publications or web sites"

Yes, to be sure.  These are the ones of which I'm most proud to
submit, and which are not only a side-effect of my journal and website
reading, but an inducement to do such reading, which we all should do
anyway to keep abreast of new development and new exposition of known
results.

"Don't send sequences that you made up, just because they are not in the OEIS"

Nearly full agreement: to "make something up" out of thin air is
unlikely to connect in a beautiful or meaningful way with core
sequences.

However, I read OEIS "actively" -- i.e. with pen in hand, or
computational software open.  If a sequence -- especially one deemed
"nice" is before me, I wrestle with its assumptions -- what happens if
I weaken the constraints?  Strengthen them? Replace an arbitrary a(0)
by making an infinite array of which that is merely one row?  If I
replace "prime" by "composite" or "square" with "power"? What if a
partial sum is replaced by a partial power?  A binomial by a
multinomial? Often, these shed no new light on anything.  But, maybe
5% to 10% of the time, something emerges which makes the original
sequence make more sense to me, in context.  If so, I like to submit,
or at least ask sefans if worth submitting.  If seqfans or njas in
email say no, then I don't submit.

I also have a back-log of sequences taken from the actual literature
where njas has pointed out a lack of clarity, or an associate editor
has pointed out an ambiguity, and I need to return for a round of
polishing.

"Submissions that seem arbitrary will be silently deleted"

This is at the heart of a problem.  New submitters to OEIS may miss
the point entirely.  This is usually clear if no formula is given, no
cross references, no citations to printed literature, or no hotlinks
to MathWorld or arXiv or the like.  Arbitrary AND isolated in a
vacuum. Cantor dust in the wind.

Taking a seq and multiplying it by 2, or 10.  Adding the digits of pi
to it. Starting it at 1000.  These are really arbitrary, and don't
seem to advance any of the OEIS goals.

But wasn't that the point of the "less" and "uned" and "probation"
tags?  Have those served no useful function?  I'm biased because I
helped urge "less" as the fuzzy boundary between arbitrary and
"probation."  But they help me, in deciding whether to spend 2 seconds
reading a new seq or 2 minutes playing with it.  They help my own
submissions.  When I get a "less" I know I'm at or over the border,
and I stop that line of inquiry, so far as submitting.

Submitters who take these hints may be redeemed from babbling
arbitrary foolishness towards actually thinking like a mathematician.
Isn't that a valid educational goal? As a teacher, working towards an
Doctorate in Education, I know that students have reasons underlying
their misbehavior.  As a teacher, my goal is to respect the dignity of
the student, preserve the value of the classroom to the students who
DO behave, and (without punishment) allow the misbehaving students to
accept logical consequences of their actions, so as to do no damage to
the integrity of the learning environment and its many other
participants, and so as to themselves make better choices in the
future.

I am amazed by the balancing act of njas and the growing team of
thoughtful and hardworking associate editors.  On the one hand, being
inclusive, so that the newcomer may have a chance to link into the
network of cross-referenced and mutual understanding at the heart of
our endeavor.  Yet not so open-door as to let every quirky impulse and
unwashed crudity crawl in.

Is there anything that needs airing or debate, or are we in
substantial agreement on the flood of arbitrary submissions, and what
is needed to prune the tree?

Thank you for letting me ask these questions.

Best,

prof. Jonathan Vos Post

On 6/2/08, N. J. A. Sloane <njas at research.att.com> wrote:
>
>
>        OEIS Summer Rules      Jun 02 2008
>
>  - Do send important new sequences and comments, especially
>   sequences that are in publications or web sites
>
>  - Don't send less important sequences or minor comments
>
>  - Don't send sequences that you made up, just because they are
>   not in the OEIS
>
>  - Submissions that seem arbitrary will be silently deleted
>
>  I am starting to change the way contributions are processed.
>  There will be major changes to the OEIS this year.
>
>  But there is a large backlog that I must get caught up with first.
>  Then there will be a lot of new programs to be written.
>  So please be patient.
>
>  Thank you!        Neil Sloane
>
>  PS Extensions of existing sequences are welcomed, also b-files, also
>  corrections of bad errors.
>
>