Related papers: There are no cycles in the $3n+1$ sequence
In 1994, Alon construct a triangle-free $(n,d,\lambda)$-graph with $d = \Omega(n^{2/3})$ and $\lambda = O(d^{1/2})$ for an exponentially increasing sequence of integers $n$. Using his ingenious construction, we deduce that there exist…
Resolving a conjecture of Bollob\'{a}s and Erd\H{o}s, Gy\'{a}rf\'{a}s proved that every graph $G$ of chromatic number $k+1\geq 3$ contains cycles of $\lfloor\frac{k}{2}\rfloor$ distinct odd lengths. We strengthen this prominent result by…
Liu and Ma [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B, 2018] conjectured that every $2$-connected non-bipartite graph with minimum degree at least $k+1$ contains $\lceil k/2\rceil $ cycles with consecutive odd lengths. In particular, they showed that this…
Very odd sequences were introduced in 1973 by J. Pelikan who conjectured that there were none of length >=5. This conjecture was disproved by MacWilliams and Odlyzko in 1977 who proved there are in fact many very odd sequences. We give…
The celebrated $3x+1$ problem is reformulated via the use of an analytic expression of the trailing zeros sequence resulting in a single branch formula $f(x)+1$ with a unique fixed point. The resultant formula $f(x)$ is also found to…
In 1975, P. Erd\H{o}s proposed the problem of determining the maximum number $f(n)$ of edges in a graph on $n$ vertices in which any two cycles are of different lengths. Let $f^{\ast}(n)$ be the maximum number of edges in a simple graph on…
Given a directed graph $D$ of order $n\geq 4$ and a nonempty subset $Y$ of vertices of $D$ such that in $D$ every vertex of $Y$ reachable from every other vertex of $Y$. Assume that for every triple $x,y,z\in Y$ such that $x$ and $y$ are…
We resolve exercise 7.2.2.4--224 of Knuth's Pre-Fascicle 8a (10 April 2026 draft, rated [46]): the digraph $\mathit{SB}(3,n)$ has no Hamiltonian cycle when $n$ is even. The argument is a sign-of-permutation obstruction. Writing the…
The Scholz conjecture on addition chains states that $\ell(2^n-1) \leq \ell(n) + n -1$ for all integers $n$ where $\ell(n)$ stands for the minimal length of all addition chains for $n$. It is proven to hold for infinite sets of integers. In…
Let $n\in\mathbb{Z}^+$. In [8] we ask the question whether any sequence of $n$ consecutive integers greater than $n^2$ and smaller than $(n+1)^2$ contains at least one prime number, and we show that this is actually the case for every…
In this paper, we convert Collatz map into a simple conjugate iterative maps defined in [0,1]. Such maps are more familiar to us and easier to deal with. Some new features of this map are observed by this method. An interesting heuristic…
The Goldbach conjecture states that every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers. This conjecture was first proposed by German mathematician Christian Goldbach in 1742 and, despite being obviously true,…
Professor Cadogan at the University of the West Indies identified special starting points that yield long subsequences where the normalization constant, k, is always one. I studied these special sequences and found an implicit mixed integer…
Although 10^230 terms of Recaman's sequence have been computed, it remains a mystery. Here three distant cousins of that sequence are described, one of which is also mysterious. (i) {A(n), n >= 3} is defined as follows. Start with n, and…
Pairs of consecutive integers have the same height in the Collatz problem with surprising frequency. Garner gave a conjectural family of conditions for exactly when this occurs. Our main result is an infinite family of counterexamples to…
In 1979 Babai found a clever argument to prove that every connected vertex transitive graph on $n \ge 3$ vertices contains a cycle of length at least $\sqrt{3n}$. Here we modify his approach to show that such graphs must contain a cycle of…
We study purely exponential Diophantine equations with four terms of consecutive bases. Notably, we prove that all solutions to the equation \[ n^x=(n+1)^y+(n+2)^z+(n+3)^w \] in positive integers $n,x,y,z$ and $w$ are given by…
In this article we relate a family of methods for automated inductive theorem proving based on cycle detection in saturation-based provers to well-known theories of induction. To this end we introduce the notion of clause set cycles -- a…
An alternative computational approach to the Collatz (3n+1) conjecture is presented that may be theoretically capable of confirming the conjecture.
The following special case of a conjecture by Loehr and Warrington was proved recently by Ekhad, Vatter, and Zeilberger: There are 10^n zero-sum words of length 5n in the alphabet {+3,-2} such that no zero-sum consecutive subword that…