User:Frostburn/Collatz scales: Difference between revisions

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→Additional results: Make additional conjectures.
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Give (seemingly) unconditional form of the Collatz iteration.
 
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The [[Wikipedia:Collatz conjecture|Collatz conjecture]] states that a certain sequence always reaches one regardless of the starting value.
The [[Wikipedia:Collatz conjecture|Collatz conjecture]] states that a certain sequence always reaches one regardless of the starting value.


== Definition ==
We can formulate the Collatz iteration musically as follows:
We can formulate the Collatz iteration musically as follows:


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We call the set <math>\left\{ s_n | n \in \mathbb{N} \right\} \cup \left\{ 2 \right\}</math> the '''Collatz scale''' of <math>s_0</math>.
We call the set <math>\left\{ s_n | n \in \mathbb{N} \right\} \cup \left\{ 2 \right\}</math> the '''Collatz scale''' of <math>s_0</math>.
It might seem that we need to somehow compute and access the components of the reduced form, but we can make the iteration unconditional by generalizing gcd and lcm to fractions.
Now the recursion is simply.
<math>
s_{n+1} = \bigl ( (1 + 3\ \mathrm{lcm}(1, s_n)) \cdot \mathrm{gcd}(1, s_n) \bigr ) \mathrm{red}\ 2
</math>


== Conjecture ==
== Conjecture ==