for those who want to see the results, it is easy as a game for children
try the 5 32 cases and hey are funnily difficult to predict...
see e.g.
https://www.dcode.fr/collatz-conjecture
пора
On Sun, Jun 21, 2020 at 7:10 PM david ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Someone called my attention this week to Terence Tao’s work on the Collatz
Conjecture. If I’d understood what this piece is discussing I might have
asked the chickens for their views, or at least steered them away from what
is called a “dangerous problem”:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematician-terence-tao-and-the-collatz-conjecture-20191211/?fbclid=IwAR1mNdy7vZzYopwOGWCiB5jiAuR74KWIykyxcJdfWI3OX8uAY2IkpWc0epA
When my brother was here we bought at an estate sale a garden chair that
tilts back and raises your feet. He owns one and recommended it, but he
warned me that every time he tries to read a book in that chair, he falls
asleep. I kept it by the front door and last summer took it into a shady
spot several times, which was pleasant, but there’s no napping when you’re
out front in an unfenced yard with a dog and cars and people on phones
walking by. This week I tried taking the chair out the back with, of
course, the dog, two cats, chickens, all of whom had things to say. The
chickens were particularly talkative, but in an uninformative way, “So I
said to her, I said…No, you just can’t do that… and you know what she
said?” I did not join in; I was at a particularly engaging bit in the
story of Entebbe. I found the book even more engaging when I woke from a
nap.
Mimo wanted to discuss cake and digestive biscuits. Maybe, “discuss”
isn’t the right word. She wanted to know what the absence of cake might
portend. “‘Let them eat cake,’ some god is supposed to have said, so where
is it?”
“A la recherche des gateaux perdu,” I muttered.
Mimo, “What?”
“Sorry, I was musing in French.”
Mimo, “Well don’t. It’s a bad habit.”
“I have a title in my head but I have no idea why.”
Mimo, “Lady Mimo of the Lake?”
“Not that kind of title. I think it would be a philosophical text.”
Mimo, “What would?”
“The volume to which this title is attached.”
Mimo, “Can it be described?”
“What?”
Mimo, “The volume? By mathematical formula? 4/3 of a pie with some r…
that sort of thing.”
“Who have you been listening to?”
Mimo, “Crows.”
“Crows describe volume in mathematical terms?”
Mimo, “What else do you think they’re talking about?”
“Territory.”
Mimo, “No one measures the volume of territory!”
There is no point in arguing with a chicken about the work habits of a
petro-chemical engineer or geologist, so I tried my title, “La Mortalité
d’Ordinateurs.”
Mimo, “What’s that mean?”
“Exactly what I was wondering.”
I had further evidence this week that both crow and Percorino are
cunning. The crows began their attack on our ripe cherries at the branches
nearest to the ground, thus depriving their competition—me—of any share.
And Pecorino? Since she still disappears in the manner of a chicken going
off to lay an egg, I looked outside the fence. Maybe she was hopping over,
dropping an egg, hopping back? Nope. I quartered the whole back yard yet
again, not according to any formula. And then it occurred to me to look in
the place where I was least likely to look, having started there: the
nesting box. Five eggs! I left one in the box, to encourage her to keep
using that spot.
They’ve finally taken down the “No trespassing” signs up at the school,
which means that Hamish can chase a frisbee again. Joy incarnate—him not
me. I was standing in the rain reflecting on how much like a Scottish
summer this week has been. Arthur Koestler weather I’d call it if that
were not a pretty obscure reference. My vegetables are overgrown by weeds,
but the flower part of the cauliflower has finally begun to show and the
tomatoes are up and running—metaphorically speaking.
Also running, much more literally, were sprinters. On this week’s one
sunny day I encountered at the school two sprinters running with small
parachutes behind them, to create drag. I was sorely tempted to tell them
that when I ran the kilted mile, I discovered drag, in two senses of the
term, but decided against. Let them develop their own formulae.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
