Saturday, October 29, 2005

A Sequence Puzzle of my Own Devising

I was just fiddling with numbers recently and came up with the following sequence:
4, 5, 5, 6, 14, 11, 8, 11, 8, 8, 13...
Can anyone tell me what the next few terms in the sequence might be? Here's a cryptic hint: 'geometry'
Edit: There's a free cherry pie for whomever can get their mind 'round this puzzle and come up with the answer...
Edit: Cherry pi? Since I posted this puzzle, my sequence has been accepted to the Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. To generate the sequence, take the digits of pi: 3. 1 4 1 5 9 2 6 5 3 5 8 9 7 9... If you take the sum of each consecutive digit (3+1), (1+4), (4+1), (1+5) etc. you get 4, 5, 5, 6, 14 and so forth. So the next few terms are 17, 16, 16... And did anyone notice the time on the posting?

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