Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Mathematics/2013 May 17

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May 17 edit

Hyper-Exponential Function edit

 

1. Why does this function return positive integer values for all positive integer arguments ?

Obviously, this is related to the fact that   ... just not sure how exactly ...
  — Proof here

2. Are there any simpler methods of computing these positive integer values, either directly or recursively ?

n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ...
f(n) 1 2 5 15 52 203 877 4140 ...
— Have you seen A000110, which gives hundreds of ways of computing these numbers?
70.162.4.242 (talk) 08:04, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
— See also
79.113.240.146 (talk) 15:00, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

3. Does this function have any special meaning or interesting properties ?

— They represent the number of partitions of a set with n members, as well as the coefficients of the Taylor series for  .
79.113.212.91 (talk) 07:52, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
— They're called Bell numbers and that formula above is Dobinski's formula.
Dmcq (talk) 12:32, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  Resolved