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A014587
Nim function for Take-a-Factorial-Game (a subtraction game).
4
0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2
OFFSET
0,3
COMMENTS
Concerning the January 1997 dissertation of Achim Flammenkamp, his home page (currently http://wwwhomes.uni-bielefeld.de/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/achim/index.cgi) has the link shown below, and a comment that a book was published in July 1997 by Hans-Jacobs-Verlag, Lage, Germany with the title Lange Perioden in Subtraktions-Spielen (ISBN 3-932136-10-1). This is an enlarged study (more than 200 pages) of his dissertation. - N. J. A. Sloane, Jul 25 2019
REFERENCES
R. K. Guy, Unsolved Problems in Number Theory, E26.
LINKS
Achim Flammenkamp, Lange Perioden in Subtraktions-Spielen, Dissertation, Dept. Math., University of Bielefeld, Germany.
FORMULA
Conjecture: Appears to be periodic with period of length 25 = [0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 3] starting with the initial term (there is no preamble). - Michel Dekking, Jul 26 2019
This conjecture is false, because moving from 10! = 3628800 to 0 is a legal move, and so a(3628800) cannot be zero. A similar argument shows that for no value of P is this sequence periodic with period P starting at term 0 (for a(P!) cannot be zero). - Nathan Fox, Jul 28 2019.
The first counterexample to the conjecture above is a(5050) = 4. - Pontus von Brömssen, Jul 09 2022
PROG
(Sage)
def A014587(max) :
res = []
fact = [1]
while fact[-1] <= max : fact.append(factorial(len(fact)))
for i in range(max+1) :
moves = list({res[i-f] for f in fact if f <= i})
moves.sort()
k = len(moves)
mex = next((j for j in range(k) if moves[j] != j), k)
res.append(mex)
return res
# Eric M. Schmidt, Jul 20 2013, corrected Eric M. Schmidt, Apr 24 2019
CROSSREFS
KEYWORD
nonn
STATUS
approved