▲ 4 points
back
2 comments
I prefer to read rather than wait in suspense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collatz_conjecture
I knew of it as "Kakutani's problem".
> start with any positive integer n. Then each term is obtained from the previous term as follows: if the previous term is even, the next term is one half of the previous term. If the previous term is odd, the next term is 3 times the previous term plus 1. The conjecture is that no matter what value of n, the sequence will always reach 1.
Update: Wikipedia article says "As of 2020, the conjecture has been checked by computer for all starting values up to 2*68"
So, I decided I would check starting with `0x00000000000001000000000000000000` ... It looks like I can't count :-)
Could a quantum computer solve it?