Aronson's sequence: Difference between revisions

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In [[Douglas Hofstadter]]'s book [[Metamagical Themas]], the sequence is credited to J. K. Aronson of Oxford, England; it is based on the observation that [[Ordinal number (linguistics)|ordinal numbers]] in the English language always end in "th".<ref>{{citation|title=Metamagical Themas: Questing For The Essence Of Mind And Pattern|first=Douglas R.|last=Hofstadter|authorlink=Douglas Hofstadter|publisher=Basic Books|year=1996|isbn=9780465045662|page=44|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=o8jzWF7rD6oC&pg=PA44}}.</ref>

The Aronson's sequence is essentially an [[Autogram]] that describes itself.

The first few numbers in the sequence are:

:1, 4, 11, 16, 24, 29, 33, ... {{OEIS|A005224}}.

The Aronson's sequence is essentially an [[Autogramautogram]] that describes itself.

{{harvtxt|Cloitre|Sloane|Vandermast|2003}} write that Aronson's sequence is "a classic example of a [[Self-reference|self-referential]] sequence";

however, they criticize it for being ambiguously defined due to the variation in naming of numbers over one hundred in different dialects of English. In its place, they offer several other self-referential sequences whose definitions rely only on mathematics rather than on the English language.<ref>{{citation