OFFSET
1,2
COMMENTS
REFERENCES
J. C. Lagarias, ed., The Ultimate Challenge: The 3x+1 Problem, Amer. Math. Soc., 2010.
LINKS
Sebastian Karlsson, Table of n, a(n) for n = 1..20000
Lorenzo Sauras Altuzarra, Some arithmetical problems that are obtained by analyzing proofs and infinite graphs, arXiv:2002.03075 [math.NT], 2020.
Thijs Laarhoven, The 3n+1 conjecture, Eindhoven University of Technology, Bachelor thesis (2009). See also.
EXAMPLE
The weakly connected components of the Collatz digraph of order 3 are 1 -> 2 -> 1 and the singleton 3. The order of the largest component is #{1, 2} = 2.
The weakly connected components of the Collatz digraph of order 10 correspond to the following partition of {1, 2, ..., 10}: {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10}, {7} and {9}. The order of the largest component is #{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10} = 8. Hence, a(10) = 8.
The weakly connected components of the Collatz digraph of order 20 correspond to the partition {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 16, 20}, {7, 9, 11, 14, 17, 18}, {15} and {19}. The order of the largest component is #{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 16, 20} = 12. Thus, a(20) = 12.
PROG
(Python)
import networkx as nx
def T(n): #A014682
return n//2 if n%2 == 0 else (3*n+1)//2
def a(n):
G = nx.Graph()
G.add_nodes_from(range(1, n+1))
G.add_edges_from([(m, T(m)) for m in range(1, n+1) if T(m) <= n])
return len(max(nx.connected_components(G)))
for n in range(1, 70):
print(a(n), end=", ")
CROSSREFS
KEYWORD
nonn
AUTHOR
Sebastian Karlsson, Dec 26 2020
STATUS
approved