UNCRACKABLE? The Collatz Conjecture - Numberphile
Professor David Eisenbud on the infamous Collatz Conjecture, a simple problem that mathematicians may not be "ready" to crack. More links & stuff in full description below ↓↓↓ Extra...
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Jeff Lagarias, a mathematician I admire a lot, thinks it's one of the hardest problems around.Erdos actually said "this is a problem for which mathematics is perhaps not ready"Turns out that all this fuss is about a problem that any fourth-grader can understand.To show you how this all works I'm gonna give you an example:Brady, chose a number between one and ten.[Brady, off camera: I shall go for seven]Alright, let us start with seven.Now, I'm gonna apply two rules depending on what number I getI'm gonna do this in succession[..] then if n is even I'm gonna take n and divide it by twoIf n is odd then I'm gonna take nCan't divide it by two and get a whole numberso I'm gonna take n and multip...
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Jeff Lagarias, a mathematician I admire a lot, thinks it's one of the hardest problems around.Erdos actually said "this is a problem for which mathematics is perhaps not ready"Turns out that all this fuss is about a problem that any fourth-grader can understand.To show you how this all works I'm gonna give you an example:Brady, chose a number between one and ten.[Brady, off camera: I shall go for seven]Alright, let us start with seven.Now, I'm gonna apply two rules depending on what number I getI'm gonna do this in succession[..] then if n is even I'm gonna take n and divide it by twoIf n is odd then I'm gonna take nCan't divide it by two and get a whole numberso I'm gonna take n and multip...
