At first glance, the problem seems ridiculously simple. And yet experts have been searching for a solution in vain for decades. According to mathematician Jeffrey Lagarias, number theorist Shizuo ...

Experienced mathematicians warn up-and-comers to stay away from the Collatz conjecture. It’s a siren song, they say: Fall under its trance and you may never do meaningful work again. The Collatz ...

Almost a century ago, a mathematician came up with a puzzle that was so seemingly simple and yet so fiendishly difficult that it has been distracting other mathematicians ever since. It has become a ...