[seqfan] Re: Can we create a workable taxonomy for classifying all the various kinds of sequences in the OEIS? - not manually

[Neil Sloane]

The March 28 2018 of the distinguished journal The Times Literary
Supplement
has a quotation on page 18 from Mark Dion that

"all taxonomies are flawed systems,
products of subjective attempts to impose objective order on the elemental
chaos of nature".

My view exactly.

Best regards
Neil

Neil J. A. Sloane, President, OEIS Foundation.
11 South Adelaide Avenue, Highland Park, NJ 08904, USA.
Also Visiting Scientist, Math. Dept., Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ.
Phone: 732 828 6098; home page: http://NeilSloane.com
Email: njasloane at gmail.com


On Sat, Apr 7, 2018 at 4:17 PM, Georg.Fischer <georg.fischer at t-online.de>
wrote:

> Dear Wayne,
>
> being also "nowhere even close to as familiar with the OEIS
> as many others" I still dare to throw in my thoughts on your
> proposal.
>
> So far the main classifications are by the keywords, and by
> the OEIS index. When I search for a sequence, I do it mostly by
> entering some numbers in the search field. I used keyword
> catalogs in libraries in my youth, but today, I mainly use
> freetext search (with Google). They even go into the b-files.
>
> I think it could be worthwhile to lean back and ponder over the
> nature of the 300k+ OEIS sequences. But I think it is totally
> impossible to *manually* introduce any additional classification
> of the OEIS sequences (because of their huge number).
>
> Any such classification or categorization must, if ever, be
> done *programmatically*. And long before such an automatic categorization
> I personallay would wish some standardized
> mechanism to run the program(s) for some sequence, and
> compare their results with the b-files.
>
> Moreover, the categories you mentioned would contain so many
> members that they are probably not useful for searching for
> a specific sequence without additional criteria.
>
> There may be areas where a generalized overview might be helpful,
> see for example my list of 48 sequences of Clark Kimberling:
> <http://www.teherba.org/index.php/OEIS/Negative-Positive>.
> But this already implied quite some work.
>
> Best regards - Georg Fischer
>
> Am 07.04.2018 um 08:35 schrieb Wayne VanWeerthuizen:
>
>> Neil wrote, "The Index to the OEIS does a pretty good job."
>>
> ...
>
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