6/1/2019 The Drills To Play

(https://www.cut-the-knot.org/manifesto/index.shtml)

Cut The Knot!

An interactive column using Java applets
by Alex Bogomolny

The Drills To Play

March 2001

Lately, I've been reading Kurt Gödel's biography by John Dawson (https://www.cut-the-
knot.org/ctk/March2001.shtml#Dawson). The book is lucid and informative. Like every absorbing reading, it
overflows one's expectations. Gödel earned his Ph.D. in early 1930. Three important results were established in the
dissertation: the completeness of the first-order calculus, the independence of the axioms he employed, and a
compactness theorem that derived satisfiability of a countable set of first-order formulas from that of its every finite
subset. None of this has qualified him for a gainful employment in the academic field. For this, among other
requirements, he had to write another major paper.

Being extremely confident in his mathematical ability, Gödel chose to tackle the second Hilbert problem
(https://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/hilbert/problems.html#prob2) of proving the consistency of the axioms of
arithmetic - a positive claim. By his own account, he set out to advance Hilbert's program. But the result he found
towards the fall of 1930 that is now known as Gödel's first incompleteness theorem, was profoundly negative: there
exist arithmetic statements that are formally undecidable, the statements that neither can be proven nor disproved in
arithmetic. (Later, he also showed that the consistency of arithmetic can be formulated in arithmetic terms and therefore
provides an example of such an undecidable statement. This is known as Gödel's second incompleteness theorem.)

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Gödel presented his results at the Conference on Epistemology of the Exact Sciences on September 6, 1930. It
appears that, except for John von Neumann, no one present (R. Carnap, H. Hahn, H. Reichenbach among others)
grasped the significance of Gödel's talk. For the reader's benefit, Dawson gives a very clear exposition of Gödel's
discoveries. By late November, von Neumann obtained an unprovability result of his own only to find out that he was
anticipated by Gödel by a few days. On several occasions thereafter, von Neumann lectured on Gödel's results rather
than on his own. The story is most fascinating as many others in the book. If you want to learn more you should
probably do your own reading. Right now, I am concerned with a small detail to which the reader is treated at the
beginning of the book.

Throughout his primary school career Gödel received the highest marks
on all his subjects. The extent of drill work in arithmetic at his time can
be gauged from a page from his first arithmetic workbook. A concept
shines through that subtraction reverses the result of addition, but the
exercise itself is pure rote -- memorization by repetition -- and would be
frowned upon by most present day math educators. Nonetheless, I think
the page might make a good poster for a mathematics class.

First, Kurt Gödel has performed the exercise as a 6-7 year old child. At
this age, kids love repetition which is for them very much a conceptual
activity. I believe it's just can't be helped. Repetition and practice
constitute an integral and necessary part of the learning process. Gödel
did it ...

Second, the poster may serve as a backdrop for introductory

philosophical remarks about mathematics. Gödel has proven that not everything in mathematics is provable. By
implication, one first conceives an idea, then proves it - if at all possible.

Third, it's OK to be mistaken. It's good to keep one's mind open while pursuing an idea. Who knows? The idea may
metamorphose into its opposite as the result of one's efforts.

But let's return to repetition and practice. Are there repetitive activities that go beyond (mindless would be a usual
adjective) memorization? Why, there's a great deal of them of course. Repetition is a life line of computational
mathematics. Iterative processes serve one example.

Given a number and a set of rules to be performed that result in another number. Apply the rules to the new number
and get a third one, and so on. Iterations may apply to a group of numbers or other mathematical objects. See, for
example, the Candy game (https://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Algebra/IntergerIterationsOnACircle.shtml)
and Integer Iterations on a Circle (https://www.cut-the-
knot.org/Curriculum/Algebra/IntergerIterationsOnACircleII.shtml). Following are three additional examples.

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Start with a number and count the number E of even and the number O of odd digits [Ecker (https://www.cut-the-
knot.org/ctk/March2001.shtml#Ecker)]. Write them down next to each other following by their sum E + O. Treat the
result as a new number and continue the process. In this example, iterations converge very rapidly. Moreover, in just a
few steps they reach the number 123 which has exactly 3 digits of which 1 is even and two are odd. Therefore,
applying the computations to 123 produces the number 123 itself, such that further iterations become really mindless.
Of course we can always start with another number.

(In the applet below and other applets on this page, most of the numbers are clickable so that you can change their
values. The starting number may be looked at as a string of individual digits or as a long number depending on whether
the Autonomous digits button is checked or unchecked.)

This applet requires Sun's Java VM 2 which your browser may

perceive as a popup. Which it is not. If you want to see the applet
work, visit Sun's website at
https://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp, download and install
Java VM and enjoy the applet.

The proof that the iterations always settle on the magic number 123 is simple but not exciting. Let's denote the above
prescription applied to number n as f(n). If n has four digits, f(n) has three and may be only one of 044, 404, 134, 314,
224. If n has 5 digits, then f(n) still has 3 of them. The first time f(n) may have 4 digits is for n with at least 10 digits. This
is when f(n) may also get 5 digits. The possibility of a 6 digit f(n) arises for numbers with at least 20 digits. Without
formalizing the argument, it is clear that f(n) < n, for n with more than 3 digits. Among three digit numbers, there are
only 033, 303, 123, and 213 to verify. For each of the four, f(n) = 123.

With the exception of bases 2, 3, and 4, the iterations always settle on number 123. In base 4, I could only find two
terminating points: 1310 (1 + 3 = 4 in decimal) and 11011 (1 + 4 = 5). In base 3, there is only one: 10212 (3 + 2 = 5). In
the binary system, there are only two points on which the iterations may possibly settle: 111101001 (3 + 6 = 9) and
1110111 (1 + 6 = 7). But there is a new phenomenon too. Some iterations enter a 2-cycle: f(1001101010) = 1011011010
(5 + 5 = 10 and 4 + 6 = 10), f(1011011010) = 1001101010.

We get more practice intensive (but this is not the main point of course) iterations by summing up powers of digits
[Ecker, (https://www.cut-the-knot.org/ctk/March2001.shtml#Ecker)Barbeau, p. 121 (https://www.cut-the-
knot.org/ctk/March2001.shtml#Barbeau)]. In the decimal system, squaring of digits may only result in cycles. Raising
digits to the third power and adding up leads to one of 5 points: 1, 153, 370, 371, 407. Modulo 3 those numbers are 1,
0, 1, 2, 2. All whole numbers divisible by 3 eventually settle on 153. Function f in this case has the property that it
preserves the value modulo 3. For example, all iterates of a number equal 2 modulo 3 are equal 2 modulo 3. Far as I

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6/1/2019 can judge, such numbers settle on either 371 or 407. On the other hand, there are cyclesThe Drills To Play
of numbers equal to
1 (mod 3). For example 23 + 43 + 43 = 136, while 13 + 33 + 63 = 244. Also f(160) = 217, f(217) = 352, and f(352) = 160,
but there are more of them. Iterations that converge starting with numbers equal 1 (mod 3) settle on either 1 or 370.

This applet requires Sun's Java VM 2 which your browser may

perceive as a popup. Which it is not. If you want to see the applet
work, visit Sun's website at
https://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp, download and install
Java VM and enjoy the applet.

Michael Ecker calls such points that terminate iterations black holes. They necessarily are fixed points
(https://www.cut-the-knot.org/blue/chaos.shtml#stationary) of the corresponding function. Function f that is the
sum of squares of the digits of a given number does not have a fixed point in base 10. In other bases, it may. For
example, in base 3, f(12) = 12. In base 5, f(23) = 23. In general, for an odd base (2k - 1) we have f(k-1 k) = k-1 k (i.e.,
(k-1)(2k-1) + k = (k-1)2 + k2). Similarly, f(k k) = k k.

All of the above iterative processes pose some problems. For example, which of the known fixed points are attractive
(https://www.cut-the-knot.org/blue/chaos.shtml#attractor) and which are repelling (https://www.cut-the-
knot.org/blue/chaos.shtml#repeller), or whether it is possible (with the sum of the third powers) to differentiate
between starting points that converge to 371 from those that converge to 407? I do not know how difficult those
problems might be. But there is one curious problem that has been around from the 1930s that even Paul Erdös (1982)
has judged as being too difficult for the present state of mathematics. It still is. The problem was proposed [Gardner, p.
203 (https://www.cut-the-knot.org/ctk/March2001.shtml#Gardner)] by Lothar Collatz and is known as the Collatz
Conjecture, but also as the 3X + 1 problem and is often associated with other names: Hailstone, Ulam, Syracuse.

Define f(n) = n/2 if n is even, and f(n) = 3n + 1, if n is odd. Collatz conjecture (https://www.cut-the-
knot.org/Curriculum/Arithmetic/Collatz.shtml) claims that regardless of the starting point the iterations settle
eventually into a 3-cycle: 4, 2, 1, 4.

This applet requires Sun's Java VM 2 which your browser may

perceive as a popup. Which it is not. If you want to see the applet
work, visit Sun's website at
https://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp, download and install
Java VM and enjoy the applet.

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As a variant, an even number may be stripped entirely of its even factors (not just divided by 2) which leads to a shorter
2-cycle 4, 1, 4. For small numbers convergence is sufficiently fast to be observed even if calculations are carried by
hand. The first number that takes more than 100 iterations is 27. Then such numbers become more frequent: 27, 31,
41, 47, 55, 62, ...

Well, let's sum up. Unlike first-order theories, the tool chest of a mathematics educator can never be complete. We
should be always looking for novel ways to make practice more meaningful and less odious for students. Playful
iterative processes are likely to fit the bill. Of the three discussed above, the first and the third may be offered even in
elementary school; all are certainly suitable for middle school. Each provides an opportunity for practice but also for
some investigations of substance. Quite a few patterns may be grasped from experimentation, some of which can be
confirmed by rigorous reasoning, but not all. Students may be surprised to learn how easy it is at times to get to the
front lines of modern mathematics.

References
1. E. J. Barbeau, Power Play (https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0883855232/ctksoftwareincA/),
MAA, 1997
2. J. W. Dawson, Jr., Logical Dilemmas
(https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1568810253/ctksoftwareincA/), A K Peters, 1997
3. M. W. Ecker, Number Play, Calculators, and Card Tricks: Mathemagical Black Holes, pp 41-52 in The
Mathemagician and Pied Puzzler
(https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=156881075X/ctksoftwareincA/) (E. Berlekamp and T. Rodgers,
editors), A K Peters, 1999
4. M. Gardner, Wheels, Life, and Other Mathematical Amusements
(https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0716715899/ctksoftwareincA/), W. H. Freeman. New York:
1983.

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