cp's OEIS Frontend

Also LCM-transform of A243353 (when viewed as an offset-1 sequence), because A243353 has the S-property explained in the comments of A368900.

A pseudo-logarithmic function in the sense that a(b*c) = a(b)+a(c) and so a(b^c) = c*a(b) and f(n) = k^a(n) is a multiplicative function. [Cf. A248692 for example.] Essentially a function from the positive integers onto the partitions of the nonnegative integers (1->0, 2->1, 3->2, 4->1+1, 5->3, 6->1+2, etc.) so each value a(n) appears A000041(a(n)) times, first with the a(n)-th prime and last with the a(n)-th power of 2. Produces triangular numbers from primorials. - Henry Bottomley, Nov 22 2001

Michael Nyvang writes (May 08 2006) that the Danish composer Karl Aage Rasmussen discovered this sequence in the 1990's: it has excellent musical properties.

All A000041(a(n)) different n's with the same value a(n) are listed in row a(n) of triangle A215366. - Alois P. Heinz, Aug 09 2012

a(n) is the sum of the parts of the partition having Heinz number n. We define the Heinz number of a partition p = [p_1, p_2, ..., p_r] as Product_{j=1..r} (p_j-th prime) (concept used by Alois P. Heinz in A215366 as an "encoding" of a partition). For example, for the partition [1, 1, 2, 4, 10] we get 2*2*3*7*29 = 2436. Example: a(33) = 7 because the partition with Heinz number 33 = 3 * 11 is [2,5]. - Emeric Deutsch, May 19 2015

A permutation of the natural numbers. - Robert G. Wilson v, Feb 22 2005

Fixed points: A029747. - Reinhard Zumkeller, Aug 23 2006

The even bisection, when halved, gives the sequence back. - Antti Karttunen, Jun 28 2014

From Antti Karttunen, Dec 21 2014: (Start)

This irregular table can be represented as a binary tree. Each child to the left is obtained by applying A003961 to the parent, and each child to the right is obtained by doubling the parent:

1

|

...................2...................

3 4

5......../ \........6 9......../ \........8

/ \ / \ / \ / \

/ \ / \ / \ / \

/ \ / \ / \ / \

7 10 15 12 25 18 27 16

11 14 21 20 35 30 45 24 49 50 75 36 125 54 81 32

etc.

Sequence A163511 is obtained by scanning the same tree level by level, from right to left. Also in binary trees A253563 and A253565 the terms on level of the tree are some permutation of the terms present on the level n of this tree. A252464(n) gives the distance of n from 1 in all these trees.

A252737(n) gives the sum and A252738(n) the product of terms on row n (where 1 is on row 0, 2 on row 1, 3 and 4 on row 2, etc.). A252745(n) gives the number of nodes on level n whose left child is larger than the right child, A252750 the difference between left and right child for each node from node 2 onward.

(End)

-A008836(a(1+n)) gives the corresponding numerator for A323505(n). - Antti Karttunen, Jan 19 2019

(a(2n+1)-1)/2 [= A244154(n)-1, for n >= 0] is a permutation of the natural numbers. - George Beck and Antti Karttunen, Dec 08 2019

From Peter Munn, Oct 04 2020: (Start)

Each term has the same even part (equivalently, the same 2-adic valuation) as its index.

Using the tree depicted in Antti Karttunen's 2014 comment:

Numbers are on the right branch (4 and descendants) if and only if divisible by the square of their largest prime factor (cf. A070003).

Numbers on the left branch, together with 2, are listed in A102750.

(End)

According to Kutz (1981), he learned of this sequence from American mathematician Byron Leon McAllister (1929-2017) who attributed the invention of the sequence to a graduate student by the name of Doudna (first name Paul?) in the mid-1950's at the University of Wisconsin. - Amiram Eldar, Jun 17 2021

From David James Sycamore, Sep 23 2022: (Start)

Alternative (recursive) definition: If n is a power of 2 then a(n)=n. Otherwise, if 2^j is the greatest power of 2 not exceeding n, and if k = n - 2^j, then a(n) is the least m*a(k) that has not occurred previously, where m is an odd prime.

Example: Use recursion with n = 77 = 2^6 + 13. a(13) = 25 and since 11 is the smallest odd prime m such that m*a(13) has not already occurred (see a(27), a(29),a(45)), then a(77) = 11*25 = 275. (End)

The odd bisection, when transformed by replacing all prime(k)^e in a(2*n - 1) with prime(k-1)^e, returns a(n), and thus gives the sequence back. - David James Sycamore, Sep 28 2022

Like A129594 this sequence utilizes the fact that compositions (i.e., ordered partitions) can be bijectively mapped to (unordered) partitions by taking the partial sums of the list of composants after one has been subtracted from each except the first one. Compositions in turn are mapped to nonnegative integers via the runlength encoding, where the lengths of maximum runs of 0's or 1's in binary representation of n give the composants. See the OEIS Wiki page and the example below.

Each n occurs A000041(n) times in total and occurs for the first time at A227368(n) and for the last time at position A000225(n). See further comments and conjectures at A227368 and A227370.

Let's define "property S" for sequences as follows: If s is any sequence of positive natural numbers, normalized to begin with offset 1, then it satisfies the S-property if LCM-transform(s) is equal to the sequence obtained by applying A014963 to sequence s, or in other words, when for all n >= 1, lcm {s(1)..s(n)} / lcm {s(1)..s(n-1)} = A014963(s(n)). This holds if and only if, for all n >= 1, when, either (case A): s(n) is of the form p^k, p prime, then gcd(s(n), lcm {s(1)..s(n-1)}) must be equal to p^(k-1), or (case B): when s(n) is not a prime power, then gcd(s(n), lcm {s(1)..s(n-1)}) must be equal to s(n). Together the cases (A) and (B) reduce to the condition that each prime power should appear in s before any of its multiples do.

Clearly the Doudna-sequence satisfies the property by the way of its construction, as do many of its variants like A356867 (see A369060).

Also, for any base-2 related permutation b that keeps all the numbers of range [2^k, 2^(1+k)[ in the same range, i.e., if for all n >= 1, A000523(b(n)) = A000523(n), then the above property is automatically satisfied.

Furthermore, because in Doudna-sequence no multiple of any term is located on the same row as the term itself (see the tree-illustration in A005940), it follows that any composition of A005940 with any such base-2 related permutation as mentioned above also automatically satisfies the S-property, for example, the permutations A163511, A243353, A253563, A253565, A366260, A366263 and A366275.

Note: Like A005940 itself, also this sequence might be more logical with the starting offset 0 instead of 1, to better align with the underlying mapping from the binary expansion of n to the prime factorization. - Antti Karttunen, Jan 24 2024

In "Bulgarian solitaire" a deck of cards or another finite set of objects is divided into one or more piles, and the "Bulgarian operation" is performed by taking one card from each pile, and making a new pile of them, which is added to the remaining set of piles. Essentially, this operation is a function whose domain and range are unordered integer partitions (cf. A000041) and which preserves the total size of a partition (the sum of its parts). This sequence is induced when the operation is implemented on the partitions as ordered by the list A112798.

Please compare to the definition of A122111, which conjugates the partitions encoded with the same system.

a(n) is even if and only if n is either a prime or a multiple of three.

Conversely, a(n) is odd if and only if n is a nonprime not divisible by three.

For this sequence the partitions are encoded in the binary expansion of n in the same way as in A129594.

In "Bulgarian solitaire" a deck of cards or another finite set of objects is divided into one or more piles, and the "Bulgarian operation" is performed by taking one card from each pile, and making a new pile of them. The question originally posed was: on what condition the resulting partitions will eventually reach a fixed point, that is, a collection of piles that will be unchanged by the operation. See Martin Gardner reference and the Wikipedia-page.

A037481 gives the fixed points of this sequence, which are numbers that encode triangular partitions: 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + n.

A227752(n) tells how many times n occurs in this sequence, and A227753 gives the terms that do not occur here.

Of further interest: among each A000041(n) numbers j_i: j1, j2, ..., jk for which A227183(j_i)=n, how many cycles occur and what is the size of the largest one? (Both are 1 when n is in A000217, as then the fixed points are the only cycles.) Cf. A185700, A188160.

Also, A123975 answers how many Garden of Eden partitions there are for the deck of size n in Bulgarian Solitaire, corresponding to values that do not occur as the terms of this sequence.

a(0) = 1, as 0 is here considered to encode an empty partition {}, and the empty product is one.

Like A129594, this sequence is based on the fact that compositions (i.e., ordered partitions) can be mapped 1-to-1 to partitions by taking the partial sums of the list where one is subtracted from each composant except the first (originally explained by Marc LeBrun in his Jan 11 2006 post on SeqFan mailing list, with an additional twist involving factorization and prime exponents, cf. A129595). The example below show how this works.

Compare the scatterplot of this sequence to those of A002487, A243353, A243499 and A253552.

Note the indexing: the domain starts from one, but the range also includes zero.