Skip to content
Research Article Open access CC BY 3.0

A Short Elementary Proof of the Unprovability of the Collatz Conjecture

Robin Nag

Journal of Advances in Mathematics and Computer Science · pp. 3023–3027 · Published 19 Aug 2014

10.9734/BJMCS/2014/12538

Abstract

Consider any positive integer n. If n is even, halve it. If n is odd, multiply it by 3 and add 1. This algorithm is then repeated indefinitely. It has been conjectured by Collatz that this process, which is also known as Hasse’s algorithm, eventually reaches 1. A new perspective on this problem is offered by considering Hasse’s algorithm in binary representation. Some important consequences are used to establish that no proof of the Collatz conjecture exists.

Collatz binary hailstone.

Cited by 0

No indexed citations yet.

Article metrics

Real usage data collected on this platform.

13

Page views

0

PDF downloads

0

Outbound clicks

0

Citations

Views over time

Views by country

Approximate, from request IP at view time — not citizenship or institution. Countries with fewer than 5 views are grouped as "Other".

Traffic sources

Referring site, by host.

Views and downloads exclude known bots/crawlers. Citations combines this platform's own DOI-resolved index with each external source's own reported total — see Cited by above for individually listed citing works. Last refreshed 0 seconds ago.