Archive for April, 2010

//The Collatz Conjecture

The Collatz Conjecture is named after Lothar Collatz and remains unsolved.

It’s very simple:

Take any natural number n. If n is even divide it by 2 (eg. n/2). If n is odd multiply it by 3 and add 1 (eg. 3n+1). Repeat.

The conjecture is that regardless of the starting number, you will always arrive at 1.

The fact that this remains unsolved is because numbers are infinite, but it’s simplicity is what makes it beautiful. I wanted to visualise the conjecture, and here is my effort…

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