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I hate being suckered by my brain. Diaries

By atomikwolf
Posted Fri Mar 18, 2005 at 11:57:01 PM PDT
It is now 1:23 AM Saturday morning, and I've spent pretty much my entire spring break trying to figure out the details of the 3x+1 problem.

I confess, I saw it online about a week ago something talking about it, and I thought that if I tried hard enough I could come up with a proof for it. I wanted to scour the internet looking for what others had done to avoid their mistakes, but being a poor math student already and only been up to Trig (for now) I was subsequently lost by all the terminologies. Whatever, I kept going.

And now its 1:25 AM and I think I may have annoyed the entire math department at the college I am attending - I've emailed practically everyone in the math department, only to forget that everyone is gone for spring break. I even emailed a few folks at other universities, hoping to have someone explain to me all these mathematical concepts so that I might better understand the problem.

I hate being myself.

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I hate being suckered by my brain. | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden)
[new] Me too... (none / 0) (#1)
by jvano on Mon Mar 28, 2005 at 12:04:26 PM PDT

I played around with the 3x+1 problem a bit over spring break too. It seems like such a simple problem but given its history chances are there are no "easy" way of answering the conjecture...



[new] 3x + 1, Colatz Conjecture (none / 0) (#2)
by Vanes63 on Fri May 06, 2005 at 12:06:53 PM PDT

Well, it DOES seem easy - doesn't it?  

I figure it's like Fermat's Last Theorem, an easy problem to state but a hard problem to solve.  

I've actually done a bit of extensive collaborative work on LOOKING at the problem and it's intrinsic nature.  I've been doing that since the Joint Meetings actually.  I was staying at a Hostel with other people from my school and there was a guy from the University of New Hampshire in our room (6 people to a room, 4 from our school, 2 "strangers" - other math people, it was cool) and we e-mailed a bit and he referred me to one of his students.  

So we've been collaborating ever since.  

I'd recommend to take a bit more math, but there are some really reachable papers about how graph theory relates to it and stuff.  Graph theory and looking at Modulus will help give you a step up on it.  It will also save you a lot of time from looking at dead ends...

Hope all goes well in your math endeavors though, don't give up.  Realize that math is so vast you may never know one thousandth about any particular area of math and that you need to just keep on chugging on and learning math.  Not many people I know are happy with their math skills, but it's not something you should hate yourself about.  

E-mail if you want more info and links to a few really great articles.

- Vanes.



I hate being suckered by my brain. | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden)
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