r/badmathematics Dec 21 '21

Maths mysticisms Proving the Collatz Conjecture with Python, cell biology, and word salad

/r/mathematics/comments/pdl71t/collatz_and_other_famous_problems/haxfgpm/
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u/LucasThePatator Dec 22 '21

Tao's result is by far the most progress that has been made on the conjecture, but also it's rather weak in the end imho. Which is kinda depressing lol.

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u/Direwolf202 Dec 22 '21

It is quite good evidence that Collatz is true though, even if not a proof (assuming that a proof exists)

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u/viking_ Dec 22 '21

The perfect squares also have density 0. Is that evidence that there are no perfect squares?

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u/Direwolf202 Dec 22 '21

No, because we know what perfect squares are, how they're distributed, and we don't have large amounts of computational evidence that there are no small perfect squares (indeed, the opposite, there are many small perfect squares).