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Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - 3:15pm

Neil J. A. Sloane

AT&T Shannon Labs, Florham Park, NJ

Location

West Chester University

UNA 161

Tea will be served in UNA 105 after the talk

The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS) is a free website that provides information about over 170,000 number sequences. Available in 49 languages, it is used by lovers of numbers, both amateurs and professionals, from all over the world. Questions such as what comes next after 1, 2, 5, 12, 29, 70, 169, ... arise in all cultures and have a universal appeal. Many users have remarked that the OEIS is one of the best examples of international cooperation on the Web. Contemplation of such wonderful discoveries as the Colombian Bernardo Recaman Santos's sequence 0, 1, 3, 6, 2, 7, 13, 20, ... (entry A5132 in the OEIS) provides a welcome escape from the troubles of our planet. The talk will discuss this sequence,the "toothpick" sequence, as well as several others that have arisen recently in connection with problems from combinatorics, graph theory, number theory and geometry. The talk will also demonstrate a new feature that has recently been added to the OEIS: the ability to listen to the sequence played on a musical instrument.