Link to home page is here: http://www.vdwnumbers.org/vdwnumbers/index.php

Link to team page is here: http://www.vdwnumbers.org/vdwnumbers....php?teamid=11

Van Der Waerden Numbers is a research project that uses Internet-connected computers to find better lower bounds for these numbers. You can participate by downloading and running a free program that runs on your computer when you're not using it. To participate, Download and run BOINC, and add Project 'vdwnumbers.org/vdwnumbers/' (for Windows computers only, does not work with Avast). You can also Read our rules and policies. This is a project of Daniel Monroe, who is a student at Takoma Park Middle School.

Background

The sequence of colors BRRBBRRB (where B is blue and R is red) does not have an evenly spaced subsequence of length 3 that are the same color. However, if you add a B to the end, you get BRRBBRRBB, which has the same color blue in positions 1,5, and 9 which are evenly spaced 4 apart. If you add an R to the end, you get BRRBBRRBR, which has R at position 3, 6, and 9. In fact, with only two colors, there is no sequence of length 9 of Bs and Rs that does not have a subsequence of 3 evenly spaced of the same color. Van der Waerden's Theorem states that for any number of colors r and length k, a long enough sequence always has an evenly spaced subsequence of the same color. The smallest length guaranteed to have an evenly spaced subsequence is called the Van Der Waerden Number and is written W(k,r). For example, W(3,2)=9. This project is to find better lower bounds for Van Der Waerden Numbers by finding sequences like BRRBBRRB. See a table of the results so far below.