Experienced mathematicians warn up-and-comers to stay away from the Collatz conjecture. It’s a siren song, they say: Fall under its trance and you may never do meaningful work again. The Collatz ...

An icon in the shape of a calendar. A magnifying glass. It indicates, "Click to perform a search". A magnifying glass. It indicates, "Click to perform a search". The word "Markets Insider". TOKYO, ...

The Collatz Conjecture is a deceptively simple math problem. It has only two rules. First, pick any number. If it's even, divide it by two. If it's odd, multiply it by three and add one. This will ...

Seaweed? Worms? Bad hair day? The animation below is a new way to look at the Collatz conjecture, one of the most high-profile open problems in mathematics. The conjecture is easy to explain, given ...