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Can Mathematica suggest what a formula means? For example if I input

$$\sum_{i=0}^n i$$

can it infer that this is a sum of integer values from $0$ to $n$? Or if I enter $0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13$, can Mathematica tell me that these are Fibonacci numbers?

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2 Answers 2

FindSequenceFunction and FindGeneratingFunction will attempt to identify how the list was produced.

FindSequenceFunction[{1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55}, n]


FindSequenceFunction[{0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13}, n]

enter image description here

FindGeneratingFunction[{0, 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13}, n]


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No, I mean something like: if I will 'give' mathematica a sequence: 0,0,1,2,3,5,8,13 it will return info that this are Fibonacci numbers, if I will give: 0,1,2,3,4,5 it will return info that this are integer values etc. But not just 'read' what it see, be give me an more precise answer –  Ziva Dec 17 '13 at 0:23
Now it is what I need! Thank you! –  Ziva Dec 17 '13 at 0:42

Yes, if you call the wolfram alpha api from inside mathematica then some of the returned data will be that sort of information.

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google gets it straight away too.. –  george2079 Dec 17 '13 at 0:20
And oeis.org may be the best resource of all. –  David Carraher Dec 17 '13 at 0:47
OEIS in Mathematica –  ssch Dec 17 '13 at 2:24

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