[Coco] 5 Simple Math Problems No One Can Solve (Kip Koon)

[Dave Philipsen]

Hugo, it is very interesting to me that it is so difficult to prove yet 
anyone with a little understanding knows that it is true. It just goes 
to show you that scientific proof is not always what it's cracked up to 
be.  You could easily write a computer program that would test all 
positive integers up to the limitation of the size of the integer by the 
computer and I'm sure it's already been done. And I'm sure that for as 
long as this problem has been around someone has tested it up to some 
pretty large numbers without finding a contradiction.  So we 'know' the 
conjecture to be true yet we cannot prove it.

The discussion could easily become a religious one since there are many 
concepts which can not be scientifically proven but certain people know 
them to be true.  As human beings we seek to prove or disprove things 
according to our nature.  But when things are outside of our nature 
things start to get crazy!

Dave


On 10/19/2016 9:41 AM, Hugo Dufort wrote:
> Collatz Conjecture