Abstract

he selects "Real Numbers " for $1,000. Trebek reads out an answer: "1.618033989, " and Plouffe responds with the question: "What is (J), or the golden mean—the limiting value of the ratio of successive Fibonacci numbers?" In real life Sloane and Plouffe are not competi tors but collaborators. Sloane is a mathematician at AT&T Bell Laboratories, well known for his work in graph theory, combinatorics and geome try. He is also the author of the Handbook of Integer Sequences, a compendium of some 2,300 se quences, published in 1973. Plouffe, a mathe matician now at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, is another collector of numbers and sequences, who volunteered a few years ago to help revise and expand the Handbook. Sloane and Plouffe are coauthors of the new edition, published last year as the Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. It is a much-enlarged and enriched work, with more than 5,400 entries. Sloane's sequence database is also accessible by electronic mail. If you send a message to the In ternet address

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