Aronson's sequence: Difference between revisions

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'''Aronson's sequence''' is a sequence of numbers that is defined to makeby the English sentence "T is the first, fourth, eleventh, sixteenth, ... letter in this sentence,." not countingSpaces spacesand orpunctuation commas"are trueignored. The first few numbers in the sequence are:

:1, 4, 11, 16, 24, 29, 33, 35, 39, 45, 47, 51, 56, 58, 62, 64, 69, 73, 78, 80, 84, 89, 94, 99, 104, 111, 116, 122, 126, 131, 136, 142, 147, 158, 164, 169, ... {{OEIS|A005224}}.

In [[Douglas Hofstadter]]'s book [[Metamagical Themas]], the sequence is credited to J. K. Aronson of Oxford, England;. itThe sequence is basedinfinite—and this statement requires some proof. The proof depends on the observation that [[Ordinalthe numberEnglish (linguistics)|ordinalnames numbers]]of inall thenumbers, Englishexcept languagethose alwaysthat end in 2, must contain at least one "tht".<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>

Aronson's sequence is closely related to [[autogram]]s . There are many generalizations of Aronson's sequence and research into the topic is ongoing.<ref name=benoit/><ref>[http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0305308 "Numerical Analogues of Aronson's Sequence" by Benoit Cloitre, N. J. A. Sloane, Matthew J. Vandermast, Cornell University Library, 21 May 21, 2003]</ref>

The first few numbers in the sequence are:

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

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

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

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 name=benoit>{{citation

{{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

| last1 = Cloitre | first1 = Benoit

| last2 = Sloane | first2 = N. J. A. | author2-link = Neil Sloane