May 19, 2026
The sequence wars hit a new note
Unusual uses of OEIS sequences on GitHub
Math nerds found secret number patterns in code, and the internet is split on whether it sounds genius or awful
TLDR: Someone found famous math number patterns hidden inside music tools, an e-reader, and even a geocaching app. The big fight in the comments: one side says sequence-based music is basically noise, while the other says great artists can turn it into something stunning.
A delightfully weird internet rabbit hole turned into full-on comment-section theater after someone went digging for references to the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences—basically a giant catalog of famous number patterns—in open-source code. What they found was gloriously bizarre: music tools using number sequences to shape melodies and rhythms, an e-reader app choosing pen sizes with a math pattern, and even a geocaching app packed with these sequences like it’s preparing users for a treasure hunt designed by a cryptic puzzle wizard.
But the real fireworks came when people asked the obvious question: does music made from these strange number lists actually sound good? One camp was brutally dismissive. Commenter jerf delivered the thread’s standout roast, saying it sounds like “random garbage, mostly,” with the actual beauty coming only when a human musician rescues the mess. Ouch. That hot take gave the whole discussion a classic internet vibe: math elegance versus your actual ears.
Then the defenders rushed in. Commenter _kb pushed back hard, pointing to electronic artist Max Cooper and saying works like Aleph 2 and Fibonacci Sequence sound amazing, not gimmicky. So now we have the perfect online feud: are these patterns a creative goldmine, or just calculator-core chaos with good PR? Add in the mental image of geocachers in the woods decoding clues with number patterns scratched in the dirt, and honestly, the comments may be the most entertaining composition here.
Key Points
- •The article reports a search for OEIS references in open-source code and highlights several unusual implementations.
- •The live-coding music framework mercury uses multiple Fibonacci-related OEIS sequences, including Fibonacci, Lucas, and Pell.
- •The Sonic Pi extension ziffers includes a broader set of OEIS sequences such as de Bruijn, Recamán’s, Thue-Morse, Dress’s, A225410, and the Inventory Sequence.
- •The Kobo e-reader document viewer Plato uses OEIS sequence A000041, the number of partitions of n, as pen-size options.
- •The geocaching app GC Wizard contains many hard-coded OEIS sequences and formulas to support offline puzzle solving.