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 ...

The Collatz conjecture is an unsolved conjecture in mathematics. It is named after Lothar Collatz, who first proposed it in 1937. The conjecture is also known as the 3n + 1 conjecture, as the Ulam ...

Some years ago, I wrote here about “hailstone numbers” (Follow that hailstone, 8 April 2016). These are numbers that are generated when you try your hand at the Collatz Conjecture—sometimes described ...

Almost a century ago, a mathematician came up with a puzzle that was so seemingly simple and yet so fiendishly difficult that it has been distracting other mathematicians ever since. It has become a ...

Kevin Lieber of Vsauce2 examines why the Collatz Conjecture is still a complex mathematical mystery.