Automatically Finding Recurrence Relations from Integer Sequences
In a lot of the recreational math and computer science problems I solve, I try to derive a recurrence relation that describes the situation. These recurrence relations pop up pretty often in counting problems (how many ways can you tile a 2xn grid with 2x1 tiles?) In some cases, I am unable to derive a recurrence relation directly from the problem statement, but still suspect that there exists some recurrence relation. In these cases, I end up solving the problem usin g brute force methods for small input sizes and analyzing/extrapolating the pattern. However, when the relation is obscure, it becomes hard to find. In order to make this process easier in the future, I created a program that can automatically find recurrence relations for arbitrary integer sequences. To use it, simply type in the first few terms of a sequence you are interested in, and it will try to find a recurrence relation for that sequence. There are some constraints on the allowable inputs/outputs which I di...