Understanding of Terminology

[Harry Neel]

What is meant by the phrase or term. "arbitrary computation(s)" as used by OEIS editors, and how do editors determine that proposed sequences are indeed arbitrary?

Thanks and regards

H. Neel

[Sean A. Irvine]

Hi Harry,

We use that when a submission has clearly been generated using some computational process, but where the submission is unsatisfactory because either it doesn't contain any associated mathematics or because it seems to involve arbitrary rules or values as part of the computational process. We also use the terminology "random computation" in a similar way to mean not so much that the values of the sequence are random, but that the selection of parameters is random or arbitrary. Both are symptoms of submissions where someone has run some code, but not bothered to think about what the result might mean or whether they are mathematically interesting.

Sometimes the submitter is able to supply a justification for what they have done, but often such sequences end up getting rejected.

Sean.

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[Allan Wechsler]

When the simplest explanation of a sequence is, "The output of the following program...", and there is no hint of why this particular algorithm is of interest, our "arbitrary computation" senses start tingling.

There are so many possible things that even a ten-line program can do, that OEIS will never come close to cataloguing all of them.

Consider the following sequence: "A(0) = 7; A(1) = 3; A(n+2) = nth Fibonacci number + 5." A program to generate this sequence can be written in a tiny amount of code in most modern programming languages. Is it worth putting into OEIS? Not unless the particular weird choices can be given some mathematical motivation. By "mathematical motivation", I mean that this very sequence arises in some mathematical context other than the output of this particular algorithm. If, for example, A(n) happened to be the number of semi-truncated Terwilliger complexes in n dimensions, then yes, yes, sign me up. If not, I'm likely to be skeptical. Why 7 and not 6? Why 5 and not 0?

-- Allan

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[Charles Greathouse]

I think this is a hard question to answer. I’ve done my best to address it at

https://oeis.org/wiki/User:Charles_R_Greathouse_IV/Imp

see also

https://oeis.org/wiki/User:Charles_R_Greathouse_IV/Is_this_sequence_interesting

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[Ruud H.G. van Tol]

On 2026-08-16 04:44, Charles Greathouse wrote:
> I think this is a hard question to answer. I’ve done my best to
> address it at
> https://oeis.org/wiki/User:Charles_R_Greathouse_IV/Imp
> see also
> https://oeis.org/wiki/User:Charles_R_Greathouse_IV/Is_this_sequence_interesting
>

> [...] sequence and relevance [...]

Good calls. When I first saw A092478, I smiled, and wondered why it was
there.
Maybe because it uses the word floor. :)

-- Ruud

[Joerg Arndt]

Similar in spirit as the question "What can the reader learn from this?".
The answer would depressingly often be "Nothing at all.".
Not that this question is usually answered, no surprise here.

Best regards,  jj

>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/seqfan/CANaFbxW-UTMwwouY4eWeo5z5SoF_AZLg0B5n%2Bz1QiWmjTEDOsg%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>
>> .
>>

[Harry Neel]

Good Time of Day to You All:

Thanks for your responses. Some, but not all, of what was received I had correctly determined. I learned much more than I knew.

As to the references that were provided, yes I accessed them and read them and they, along with your responses have been saved for my referral. (You never know what will be useful guidance.)

As an aside, I did not realize that some might call my query a hard one to answer. However, my wife keeps telling me that I ask everyone hard questions. Not. True. (At least I am unaware of them.)

I must also say that I had not put, "What can the reader learn from this?" on 'the same shelf' with my question, but I do understand the relationship.

Again, thank you all.

Best Regards,

H. Neel

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