[seqfan] Re: Announcements: faster search, new Sys Admin

[Russ Cox]

On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 2:47 PM Neil Sloane <njasloane at gmail.com> wrote:

> EVERYONE who uses the OEIS regularly should know to omit the first 2 or 3
> terms before doing a search.  This is essential.
>
> However, many people who are using
> the OEIS for the first time don't know this, and I agree that this is
> a major problem.
>
> Only the other day an expert in knot theory
> reviewing a paper, thought it contained a new sequence,
> simply because he did not omit an initial 0 when looking it up.
> So he missed the earlier work on the problem.
>
> So I agree with Brad's suggestion.  In fact I would strengthen it to say
>
> Could there be a post-condition on search returns that checks
> for null result and on finding nothing, searches again without first two
> terms?
>

Yes, in fact my plan (nearly done) is to make a search with no results run
a "lite superseeker" that is basically everything except the heavy
computations like gfun, guesss, and rate. And of course dropping the first
two terms is one of the many things superseeker tries. So hopefully soon!

Best,
Russ