[seqfan] Re: Poll: Sequences Suitable For Crunchers vs. Formula Finding Algorithms

[Donald Alan Morrison]

On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 4:39 AM, Richard Mathar
<mathar at strw.leidenuniv.nl> wrote:
> dm> To: Sequence Fanatics Discussion list <seqfan at list.seqfan.eu>
> dm> Subject: [seqfan] Poll: Sequences Suitable For Crunchers vs. Formula Finding Algorithms
> various reasons) which deserve to be extended. One of my favorites are the
> A006945 Miller-Rabin terms, which from a very practical point of view provide
> a "safe net" for primality testing, and can reduce computing time on a
> world-wide scale.
> Finding more terms is, however, not sexy, because there are
> essentially no discoveries to be made nor any prizes to be won. I guess

Perhaps such a sequence as A006945 could be thrown onto the BOINC
world (since many participants crunch simply for the points).

Aside: With the advent of AKS, how long will the Miller-Rabin terms be
useful (a guess)?

> similar things may be said about more prominent number chases in
> the Mersenne prime, aliquot sequence etc area (for which similar
> applications may be missing...?) Competing with these is no fun.

No fun for those who can engineer superseeker style searches.

Again, I think a lot of BOINC crunchers do it just for "putting points
on the board", so they will sign up regardless.  Look at the Collatz
Project(!) it's not even looking for a counter-example(!) yet people
donate ridiculous sums of electricity and time to it.  I think the
seqfan folks such as yourself could "dip into" this waste and get some
useful terms from such brute force means, while still pursuing other,
more directed, thoughtful and effective ways of finding interesting
terms such as with superseeker et al.  Plus, it would give me
something to do. :^)

http://boinc.thesonntags.com/collatz/

> So the question aside from keyword issues is: which extension would
> be most beneficial from a math community point of view?

I agree, and I'm willing to donate programming time for more naive
brute-force-like efforts that agree with this, since I'm just a
programmer, not a superseeker architect (though I'd love to learn over
time).

Cheers,
Don