Tag Archives: sequence

A sampler of Ramanujan’s elementary results and their manifold ramifications

As we have remarked before, Ramanujan seemed as if channeling the world-conquering strides of Viṣṇu, when he single-handedly bridged the lacuna in Hindu mathematics from the days of the brāhmaṇa-s of the Cerapada to the modern era. Starting around the … Continue reading

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Are civilizational cycles the norm?

Nearly two and half decades back, we used to have several conversations with a late śūlapuruṣīya professor, mostly on topics with a biological angle. While not a mathematician, he had a passing interest in dynamical systems, for he felt that … Continue reading

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Some observations on the Lekkerkerker-Zeckendorf decomposition of integers

In our youth, we learned of a nice arithmetic theorem of Lekkerkerker (more popularly known after Zeckendorf; hereinafter L-Z) that relates to the famous Mātrā-meru sequence : 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8… defined by the recurrence relationship . … Continue reading

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Two exceedingly simple sums related to triangular numbers

This note records some elementary arithmetic pertaining to triangular numbers for bālabodhana. In our youth we found that having a flexible attitude was good thing while obtaining closed forms for simple sums: for some sums geometry (using methods of proofs … Continue reading

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A great statistician, and biographical, numerical musings on ancient game

Recently my friend brought it to my attention that C. Radhakrishna Rao had scored a century. Born in 1920 CE to Doraswamy Nayadu and A. Laxmikanthamma from the Andhra country, he is one of the great mathematical thinkers and statisticians … Continue reading

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Counting pyramids, squares and magic squares

Figure 1. Pyramidal numbers The following note provides some exceedingly elementary mathematics, primarily for bālabodhana. Sometime back we heard a talk by a famous contemporary mathematician (M. Bhargava) in which he described how as a kid he discovered for himself … Continue reading

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An arithmetic experiment and an unsolved problem

We realized that a simple arithmetic experiment we had performed in our youth is actually related to an unsolved problem in number theory. It goes thus: consider the sequence of natural numbers Then find the distance of to nearest prime … Continue reading

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Generalizations of the prime sieve and Pi

PDF version for better reading Eratosthenes, the preeminent yavana philosopher of early Ptolemaic Egypt [footnote 1], composed a hymn to the god Hermes of which only some fragments have come down to us. This connection to Hermes is evidently related … Continue reading

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The Mātrā-meru and convergence to a triangle

What is presented below will be elementary for someone with even just the mastery of secondary school mathematics. Nevertheless, even simple stuff might present points of interest to people who see beauty in such things. Consider the following question: Given … Continue reading

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Sequences related to maps based on simple fractional functions

One of the pleasures of an unstructured youth in the pre-computer era was what we called calculator games. As our father took his prized calculator with him to work we only got a little time with it in the evenings. … Continue reading

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Some Nārāyaṇa-like convergents and their geometric and trigonometric connections

While playing with an iterative geometric construction in our youth we discovered for ourselves a particular right triangle whose sides are in the proportion , where is the Golden Ratio. This triangle is of course famous as being the basis … Continue reading

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Chaos, eruptions and root-convergence in one-dimensional maps based on metallic-sequence generating functions

bronze_bouncer Over the years we have observed or encountered certain natural phenomena that are characterized by rare, sudden eruptive behavior occurring against a background of very low amplitude fluctuations. We first encountered this in astronomy: most remarkably, in the constellation … Continue reading

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Nārāyaṇa’s sequence, Mādhava’s series and pi

The coin-toss problem and Nārāyaṇa’s sequence If you toss a fair coin times how many of the possible result-sequences of tosses will not have a successive run of 3 or more Heads? The same can be phrased as given tosses … Continue reading

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Discovering bronze in the characteristic ellipse of right triangles

The arithmetic mean square of a right triangle An entire family of right triangles that includes all the different forms of right triangles defined in terms of the proportion of their legs can be obtained by setting their altitude to … Continue reading

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Fermat’s little theorem and the periods of the reciprocals of primes

From the genetic code to the proof of Fermat’s little theorem Nucleic acids encode the 20 amino acids found in the sequence of a protein using just 4 bases: A, G, T, C in DNA. Thus, the 4-symbol nucleic acid … Continue reading

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Division-multiplication parabolas, triplications, and quadratic residues

Introduction Many strands of our investigations on conic-generating integer sequences, word fractals and cellular automaton models for pattern formation came together in an unexpected manner while investigating a simple integer sequence. While some of these connections have have been known … Continue reading

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A note on the least prime divisor sequences of 2p plus or minus 1

Let be the sequence of prime numbers: 2, 3, 5, 7… Define the sequences such that . Then sequence is defined such that is the lowest prime divisor (LPD) of and sequence is defined so that is the LPD of … Continue reading

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A sequence related to prime counting

The current note arose as an exploration branching off from the matter discussed in these earlier notes: this one and this one. As we saw before, Carl Gauss, while still in his teens, produced his first estimate of the prime … Continue reading

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Some novel observations concerning quadratic roots and fractal sequences

Disclaimer: To our knowledge we have not found the material presented here laid out here presented in completeness elsewhere. However, we should state that we do not follow the mathematical literature as a professional and could have missed stuff. Introduction … Continue reading

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Triangles, Hexes and Cubes

One philosophical question which we have often ponder about is: Are numbers “real”? One way to approach this question is via figurate numbers, where numbers directly manifest as very tangible geometry. This idea has deep roots in our tradition: as … Continue reading

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Hofstadter and Nārāyaṇa: connections across space and time

The scientist-philosopher Douglas Hofstadter presents an interesting single-seeded sequence H in his book ‘Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid’. It is generated by the recurrence relation, where …(1) Working it out one can see that it takes the form: … Continue reading

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