Sequence Man, Neil Sloane

Fascinating new Erica Klarreich piece (interview) in Quanta on Neil Sloane and the OEIS, Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, which is now home to more than a quarter million number sequences contributed by mathematicians the world over:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150806-neil-sloane-oeis-interview/

Turns out that when Neil isn't curating (along with a set of editors) number sequences he's writing guidebooks about rock-climbing in New Jersey! Yet that is one of the less interesting of all the many great tidbits in the article.
[By the way, since my previous post was about math and music, worth noting that all the sequences in the OEIS can (as an option on the site) be put to music and played!]

Happy Birthday Neil Sloane and OEIS!

Wonderful Alex Bellos piece in The Guardian today, on Neil Sloane and the OEIS (Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences) he founded. Fascinating reading:

http://tinyurl.com/n6wcev4

I was happy to learn of the Kolakoski sequence which combines a number sequence with self-reference (one of my favorite topics), and of which Bellos writes, "Mathematicians drool over this sequence."
 The OEIS has been around as a go-to resource for mathematicians of all stripes for 50 years now, and today includes some 250,000 number sequences, while still growing, according to the article, at a rate of about 40 new sequences each day! Some sequences can be quite creative of course, and open up interesting, difficult-to-solve questions.
Rutgers' Doron Zeilberger goes so far as to say that the OEIS has made Sloane the world's most influential mathematician!
Lots more in the article, including a video.

Sloane's Gap... and some books

Haven't featured a video from Numberphile for quite awhile, so I'll remedy that right now… James Grime on the interesting "Sloane's Gap" and the OEIS here:




Meanwhile, the unpredictable Clifford Pickover is out with his latest offering, "The Book of Black" -- who'd-a-thunk-it! an entire book on, well, see for yourself:

http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/book-black.html

More to my interests is a new book entitled "The Outer Limits of Reason" by Noson Yanofsky:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-262-01935-4

Finally, my own look at Edward Frenkel's "Love and Math" is now up at MathTango here:

http://mathtango.blogspot.com/2013/10/in-love-with-math-frenkels-new-book.html