I love the myth of sirens, the idea that a voice can be so beautiful that it could lure people to their deaths has had me obsessed ever since I first heard of it.
In math, the closest thing we have to a siren song is the Collatz Conjecture, which seems so simple on the surface but has led countless mathematicians into wasting their life away trying to prove it.
3x+1.
the rule is simple: pick a number, any number. If its even divide it by 2, but if its odd multiply it by 3 and add 1. Apply that rule to every answer you get.
No matter which number you start with, you'll learn that all roads lead to 1.
Mathematicians have calculated this with obscenely big numbers and have found this pattern recurring but its deceptively difficult to definitely prove that every number follows this arbitrary little rule. So far, no one has succeeded.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/CollatzGraph_1300Lede.mp4 <- a mesmerizing lil visualization of the problem
In math, the closest thing we have to a siren song is the Collatz Conjecture, which seems so simple on the surface but has led countless mathematicians into wasting their life away trying to prove it.
3x+1.
the rule is simple: pick a number, any number. If its even divide it by 2, but if its odd multiply it by 3 and add 1. Apply that rule to every answer you get.
No matter which number you start with, you'll learn that all roads lead to 1.
Mathematicians have calculated this with obscenely big numbers and have found this pattern recurring but its deceptively difficult to definitely prove that every number follows this arbitrary little rule. So far, no one has succeeded.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/CollatzGraph_1300Lede.mp4 <- a mesmerizing lil visualization of the problem
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