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Ashwat Prasanna
The Collatz Conjecture
My Project recently won the Grand Award at IRIS National Fair 2024! Selected as ISEF Finalist 2025
What is the conjecture?
The Collatz Conjecture is an unsolved problem in Number Theory, first identified by Lothar Collatz in 1937.
Pick a number, any number! If it is even, divide it by 2. If it is odd, multiply by 3 and add 1. Now, repeat this step indefinitely with the number you get.
Lothar Collatz conjectured this result would always go down to 1 (a fixed point), but this hasn't been proven in 87 years.
"Mathematics is not yet ripe enough for such questions"
- Paul Erdos
Progress on the Conjecture!
I have been working on simplifying the conjecture and exploring novel base-2 representations of values in the conjecture (including stochastic patterns in these representations) with my mentor Mr. Abishek Bhattacherjee. Please find the research abstract below. The research is presently under review by the American Mathematical Monthly. Do check out this section for updates on the publication.
Won the Grand Award at IRIS National Fair 2024!
Selected to represent Team India at ISEF 2025!
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