Desiree Barte

September 9, 2013

So the Collatz conjecture is a thing in where a starting number called a seed is put into
an equation depending where or not that seed is an even or odd number. So if my starting seed
is a negative number, the conjecture tells me to multiply that number by 3, add one and then
divide it by 2. If the seed is a positive number, it just has to be divided by 2. All other numbers
after the first number follow the same rule, where it will eventually reach the number 1. In my
graph I am plotting the number of positive numbers in every Collatz orbit with seeds starting
from 1 to 25. To do this I followed the rules for the conjecture for each of those aforementioned
numbers marked them down on a chart and counted each even number of the entire length of the
orbit. Initially when observing the patterns in the Collatz orbits, I noticed that the last five
numbers for almost every one of the first 25 orbits were 5, 8, 4, 2, and 1. The only one that
didnt fit was the orbital for 21, where it was 16, 8, 4, 2, and 1. Another pattern I saw was that
the first row went from even, odd, odd, even over and over. From my graph, I also noticed that
numbers that had the same amount of even numbers, the length of their orbit were also the same
but looking closely it doesnt fully apply.
A conjecture, by online definition is an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of
incomplete information. Some conjectures that I have made form the data I have are that the last
4 numbers of each orbital will be 8, 4, 2, and 1 (with 5, before 8 ,showing up in almost all of
them) and that the first row of each orbital in sequence will be in the order of even, odd, odd,
even. For mathematic research I learned its a lot of numbers, and patterns and analyzing what
those patterns and numbers mean. The field that comes to mind would be many science fields.
Depending on what theyre researching they can receive a lot of numbers and they have to figure
out its meaning. I guess so anyway. The coding using odd and even numbers to 1 and 0 simply
remind me of programming using binary code. The role that patterns played into this conjecture
was to predict the outcomes of untested orbits. By using a pattern in a set of numbers, in this case
1 to 25, things for larger numbers can be assumed.