Despite recent progress on the notorious Collatz conjecture, we still don’t know whether a number can escape its infinite loop.

An attempt at tackling the intractable Collatz conjecture is a “noble failure” demonstrating the promise of automated reasoning techniques.

The Collatz conjecture has plagued mathematicians for decades—so much so that professors warn their students away from it ...

Mathematicians regard the Collatz conjecture as a quagmire and warn each other to stay away. But now Terence Tao has made more progress than anyone in decades.

The Collatz conjecture is also known as the “3n + 1” problem. It’s an easy problem to explain and check, and has been tested up into the nineteen figure range. But it’s only now that ...

We almost have a solution to an exceptionally tricky mathematical riddle first posed 82 years ago. The problem, known as the Collatz conjecture, is easy to state. Start with any positive whole ...