I Am Math

The Collatz Problem is a notorious math conjecture. It states that any number will reach 1
by going through certain formulas. The formula is determined by the number being even or odd.
The formula for even numbers is n/2. The formula for odd numbers is (3n+1)/2. Any number that
goes through these formulas will eventually reach the number 1. I will be graphing the patterns
in negative numbers going through the collatz conjecture. A pattern that I have noticed in the
Collatz Conjecture is in the first row. The first seed is one and the when you put that through the
odd number function you get 2. The next see is 2 and once you put that through the even number
function you get 1. THe next seed is 3, and when you put that through the odd number function
you get 5. So the pattern is on every odd number that you put through the function goes up by 3.
For example 1=2, 3=5, 5=8, 7=11. Also as every odd number goes up by 3, each even number
that you put through the function goes up by 1. For example 2=1, 4=2, 6=3, 8=4. Another pattern
that I noticed through the coded 0 and 1 is the each row has a repeating sequence. So for the first
row the sequence is 0110. 0110 keeps repeating over and over again. For the second row the
pattern is 10010110. The amount of numbers in each sequence doubles. So the first sequence has
4 number, and the second sequence has 8 numbers, and the third sequence has 16 numbers, and
so on.

A conjecture is a hypothesis or educated guess that works every time, but has not yet
been proven to be true or untrue. A conjecture that Mele made was 4(5n+7)-28/n. This
conjecture states that by performing this function with any two digit number your answer will
always be 20. Something that I have noticed about math research is it can be very challenging to
understand. For this topic I had to read other things outside of what we learned in class to fully
understand what was going with the Collatz Conjecture.. The process in class was tough. First
we had to learn about what a conjecture was. Then we learned about the Collatz Conjecture and
fill out a chart following the functions of it. Then we had to code the conjecture, where every odd
number was 1, and every even number is 0. Then we had to make modifications where instead of
doing positive numbers we switched to negative numbers. Or instead of adding 1 in the odd
number function we subtracted 1. After we had to plot our findings to see if there were any other
patterns in the conjecture. We searched for patterns because it would make it easier to solve this
conjecture. Patterns are important because they basically make shortcuts when trying to solve or
prove a conjecture. They help take the next step to proving a conjecture by showing things that
may happen again or repeat when testing other numbers.