Talk:Look-and-say sequence

message: Audioactive decay now redirects here - could someone add a mention of it? FreplySpang (talk) 19:11, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: To be more precise, Conway's original article was on pages 5-16 of Eureka 46 (January 1986). Page 4 of the same issue tells a bit more of its history (and my own part in it), going back to the Dutch team in the 1977 International Mathematical Olympiad, via the British team (including myself), via Miranda Mowbray and Eddy Welbourne (who edited Eureka 46) to Prof. Conway hearing about the problem shortly before Christmas 1983 and writing the article for Eureka 46 in January 1986. [Richard Pennington]
82.15.183.136 (talk) 20:59, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: More on the Origins

message: The article claims the sequence is a "sequence of integers". Is this really the case? (That is, does the rule yield 1111111111 → 101 → 111011 in base 10?) Or is it a sequence of sequences of integers? (That is, does the rule yield 1111111111 → {10}1 → 1{10}11?) Gdr 20:05, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)
:Yes, it is a sequence of integers, not a sequence of sequences of integers.  The rule to change one element of the sequence to the next decomposes the first integer into a string of base 10 digits, applies a transformation on them, and then converts the result into another integer.  Your example does not cause a problem, because it can be proven that there will never appear a string of 10 identical digits (unless we begin with one as the first element).   In fact there will never appear a string of more than 3 identical digits, because of the optimality of the transformation (11 → 21, not 1111). Redquark 21:11, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Sequence or sequence of sequences?

message: * Does this sequence have any practical applications?
* What is the connection with run-length encoding?  Is look-and-say used as part of a compression technique?
* It's a bit confused whether there is one such sequence, or if there are an infinite number because different start sequences may be used.
: I see your point. In fact, Look-and-say is not a sequence. Rather, it is a rule for generating sequences from a seed value. To me, the distinction is clear. But if you worry this could be confusing to some people, why not have a go at reworking the text? Cheers
: --Philopedia 23:04, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expansion request 

message: The "Basic property" : "The 70th member of the sequence has 179,691,598 digits." seems completely useless, can someone give me a reason why it should stay ? (If not, I'll remove it in a few days)
--Garo 21:54, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  useless info ? 

message: The "Properties" section contains a lot of undefined terms that the reader is assumed to be able to deduce the meaning of:
* variant
* degenerate sequence
* seed number
* transuranic
* cosmological theorem (wikified, but no such article exists)
* generation
Some are more obvious than others, but it would help if they were all defined before use.
Further, and importantly, are these terms in actual use, or have they been coined so that they can be used in the article? If the latter is true, they should be replaced with their definitions. — Paul G 10:36, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I can see, variant has its usual English meaning, degenerate has a link, and I just added (seed) to clarify that it is the starting number in a variant sequence.  Maybe iteration would be better than generation there?  In any case I think those are obvious but as someone who has done work on slightly similar subjects I may be biased.  I believe I was the one who added "transuranic" and someone else added "cosmological theorem", as far as I know both are terms Conway uses, as part of his work on this sequence and its variants.  Actually I think the cosmological theorem is essentially the content of the item mentioning it, so I've clarified that and removed the link (I doubt it will get its own article as it only exists within the context of the L&S sequence).  --Ørjan 18:39, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Undefined terms 

message: For fun, I made this: http://bendwavy.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/conway.png
The roots (crosses in the article's picture) are the points where all four colors meet.  Green means the real part of Conway's polynomial is positive, and red means the imaginary part is positive. —Tamfang (talk) 02:02, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops, my picture appears to put positive reals on the left.  Wonder why. —Tamfang (talk) 17:18, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conway's polynomial 

message: Pea pattern? Stop making things up... --24.90.209.169 (talk) 02:12, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pea pattern? 

message: The Computer program section was growing too large, clearly MOS:CODE doesn't support including more than one code example at most.  I was pondering whether to keep the Python or not, but even that didn't seem particularly illustrative, so I asked someone and they said the section wasn't needed at all since it wasn't an article about an algorithm.  So I just deleted it entirely.  --Ørjan (talk) 10:30, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds reasonable to me. --JBL (talk) 14:21, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Computer program section 

message: I don't think the graph purporting to show the growth in the number of digits can be quite right.  The blue plot looks as though it starts 1,1,1, whereas it should start 1,2,2 
Kestrelsummer (talk) 22:26, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Comparing the other colored lines, I would say the graph starts 2, 2, 2.  Otherwise looks fine. Good eye. --JBL (talk) 23:43, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Graph 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Is '22' (which can be read as 'two 2s') considered some kind of Pseudo 'Look-and-say' number? ThrowawayEpic1000 (talk) 20:10, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: See the section Look-and-say sequence#Growth where this is mentioned briefly. --JBL (talk) 20:18, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  A question