3 ms·
Collatz Conjecture is one of those frustrating conjectures that a middle schooler can understand, but no one has proved, despite some of the best minds in math
by empath75 7y ago
Collatz Conjecture is one of those frustrating conjectures that a middle schooler can understand, but no one has proved, despite some of the best minds in math taking a crack at it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mFpVDpKX70 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mFpVDpKX70
- lisper 7y agoWikipedia also has an excellent overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collatz_conjecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collatz_conjecture
- HarryHirsch 7y agoThe article cites Erdős, saying "Mathematics may not be ready for such problems"
- colorincorrect 7y agoI've read this sentiment before, but could never understand why. Is something about this question that is fundamentally different from normal questions in number theory?
- dannyking 7y agoNot that we know of, and yet the proof is still illusive despite many great minds attempting to solve it. That's what makes it so alluring.
- taejo 7y agoI'm not a number-theory expert, but I think that non-primitive-recursive functions (iteration/recursion that isn't bounded ahead of time) don't really show up in number theory at all.
- lidHanteyk 7y agoThe Collatz map itself gives a discrete dynamical system, which we can't tackle in general. Conway showed that a generalization of Collatz, where 3 is generalized to any odd prime, is Turing-undecideable.