The Collatz conjecture is an unsolved conjecture in mathematics. It is named after Lothar Collatz, who first proposed it in 1937. The conjecture is also known as the 3n + 1 conjecture, as the Ulam conjecture (after Stanislaw Ulam), or as the Kakutani's Problem, or as the Syracuse problem; the sequence of numbers involved is referred to as the hailstone sequence or hailstone numbers, or as wondrous numbers.
We take any whole number n greater than ...
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The Collatz conjecture is an unsolved conjecture in mathematics. It is named after Lothar Collatz, who first proposed it in 1937. The conjecture is also known as the 3n + 1 conjecture, as the Ulam conjecture (after Stanislaw Ulam), or as the Kakutani's Problem, or as the Syracuse problem; the sequence of numbers involved is referred to as the hailstone sequence or hailstone numbers, or as wondrous numbers.
We take any whole number n greater than 0. If n is even, we halve it (n/2), else we do "triple plus one" and get 3n+1. The conjecture is that for all numbers this process converges to 1. Hence it has been called "Half Or Triple Plus One", sometimes called HOTPO.
Paul Erdős said about the Collatz conjecture: "Mathematics is not yet ready for such confusing, troubling, and hard problems." He offered $500 for its solution. (Lagarias 1985)
In 2006, researchers Kurtz and Simon, building on earlier work by J.H. Conway in the 1970s, wrote that a natural generalization of the Collatz...
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