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From: nand@athena.mit.edu (Nand M Mulchandani)
Newsgroups: comp.theory
Subject: 3n + 1 problem
Message-ID: <1990Sep21.212241.21613@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 21 Sep 90 21:22:41 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Reply-To: nand@athena.mit.edu (Nand M Mulchandani)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 32

Hi !

	When I was taking my automata theory course at Cornell University, we
discussed an undecidable problem which can be stated as the following :

	'n' is a positive integer.
	if n is odd, make n = 3 * n + 1.
	if n is even, divide by 2.
	
	Question(s) : (maybe not exact) Does n always -> 0 ?
				     If it does, in how many steps ?

	My question is : is the correct statement of the problem ?
	and            : Has a solution been found ?


			Thanks in advance !


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