The integer sequence beginning with a single digit in which the next term is obtained by describing the previous term. Starting with 1, the sequence would be defined by "1, one 1, two 1s, one 2 one 1," etc., and the result is 1, 11, 21, 1211, 111221, .... Similarly, starting the sequence instead with the digit d for gives d, 1d, 111d, 311d, 13211d, 111312211d, 31131122211d, 1321132132211d, ..., as summarized in the following table.

The number of digits in the nth term the sequence for d = 1 are 1, 2, 2, 4, 6, 6, 8, 10, 14, 20, 26, 34, 46, 62, ... (Sloane's A005341). Similarly, the numbers of digits for the nth term of the sequence for d = 2, 3, ..., are 1, 2, 4, 4, 6, 10, 12, 14, 22, 26, ... (Sloane's A022471). These sequences are asymptotic to , where

The quantity is known as Conway's constant (Sloane's A014715), and amazingly is given by the unique positive real root of the polynomial

	(4)

all of whose roots are illustrated above.

In fact, the constant is even more general than this, applying to all starting sequences (i.e., even those starting with arbitrary starting digits), with the exception of 22, a result which follows from the cosmological theorem. Conway discovered that strings sometimes factor as a concatenation of two strings whose descendants never interfere with one another. A string with no nontrivial splittings is called an "element," and other strings are called "compounds." It is postulated that every string of 1s, 2s, and 3s that does not contain four of the same number in succession eventually "decays" into a compound of 92 special elements, named after the chemical elements.

 

Conway's Constant, Cosmological Theorem, Run-Length Encoding