Jump to content

Talk:Evil number

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Origin of term

[edit]

A comment in the OEIS sequence says "The terms "evil numbers" and "odious numbers" were coined by Richard K. Guy, c. 1976 (Haque and Shallit, 2016) and appeared in the book by Berlekamp et al. (Vol. 1, 1st ed., 1982)." (Where "the book" is "Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays".) I skimmed https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.00092 which seemed likely to be the relevant Haque and Shallit paper, but did not spot any comment about the origin of the terms. I think the origins of these terms would be of definite interest if anyone can source something sufficiently solid. Hv (talk) 12:30, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]