Dear Dr. Douglas Hofstadter,
Having been a fan of yours since GEB (I had you sign my copy in '83 at UC Santa Cruz), I have always wanted to write to you about an "odometer game" I concocted about 1973 which touches upon several of your favorite themes: patterns, their recognition, and "human" vs "machine" intelligence. Following Hofstadter's law, it has taken longer to write you than I ever thought it would. ;-)The thought-provoking part is imagining how a computer would ever "play" the game. It would involve mathematically defining "remarkable" odometer numbers, where "remarkable" is defined as any number that would intuitively cause the driver to remark to the other passengers: "Hey, look at the odometer!". The more likely a number is to cause a driver to say that, the higher its "remarkableness".
I've casually pondered the math for this for years. Let me know if you have already solved it.
sincerely,
Bruce Wallace
The Odometer Game
As many people have done over the years, I honked my horn when my odometer rolled over to all zeros [000000] (back when that only took 100,000.0 miles to do so). Later, when I put on another 11,111.1 miles [111111], I decided that an odometer reading of all ones was also worthy of a honk (a bit of a geek whimsy).
Since I had many long boring drives between college and parents, I came up with a little diversion which was to honk (or otherwise take note of) any "remarkable" odometer reading [where "remarkable" was any number that would make a driver point it out to the passengers].
I even accumulated imaginary points that mirrored the amount of "remarkableness" of the number. But, soon I realized I needed a reason to keep from simply taking note of EVERY number in my quest to build up my point total. I thought that maybe some function balancing total-points vs average-points-per-honk was needed. And to make things more sporting, I should lose points if I missed any numbers in a "pattern" once I had taken points for that pattern. In other words, if I took points for [000000] and [111111], I would lose points if I missed [222222]. (I.E., don't start a pattern if you aren't going to keep it up!)
So, [000000] was definitely remarkable, and so was [111111], [222222], [333333], etc. (Hmmm... [111111] seems less remarkable than [000000], and [222222] thru [888888] all seem less remarkable than either [000000] or [111111]...should they all get the same points?). Then came [123456]. And while less remarkable, [234567], [345678], etc. all seem pretty good.
Palindromes are very good, but [123321] seems more remarkable than [394493] or [825528]. And [121212] & [123123] are very good, but less so [838383] & [378378]. While [010101] and [999999] beat out [898989] & [888888] respectively, all seem good enough to take the points.
Round numbers like [010000], [020000], [030000], etc. seem nice because the pattern is anchored with [000000]. Actually, a number like [000000] meets lots of patterns at once: [aaaaaa], [ababab], [abccba], [abcabc], etc. (in addition to being the ultimate round number), so, it gets LOTS of points.
The Puzzle
Why are some numbers (i.e. digit strings) instinctively more "remarkable" than others? How would one model this mathematically? Patterns seem part of the answer, but a readily recognizable pattern is in [192837] even though it would seem very unlikely for a driver to make a passenger take note of that number/pattern.
And why are [000000], [111111], & [999999] all more "remarkable" than [222222] thru [888888]? Why is [123456] more than [012345], but [121212] and [010101] seem more of a toss up? Is the "simplicity" of the pattern the crux of "remarkableness"? How would one describe that "simplicity" mathematically (especially when 0 and 1 and 9 seem somehow more "simple" than 2 thru 8)? What grammar "parses" this string language?
