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Project Information
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Consider the following algorithm: 1. input n 2. print n 3. if n = 1 then STOP 4. if n is odd then n = n/2 5. else n = 3n+1 6. GOTO 2 Given the input 22, the following sequence of numbers will be printed 22 11 34 17 52 26 13 40 20 10 5 16 8 4 2 1 It is conjectured that the algorithm above will terminate (when a 1 is printed) for any integral input value. Despite the simplicity of the algorithm, it is unknown whether this conjecture is true. It has been verified, however, for all integers n such that 0 < n < 1,000,000 (and, in fact, for many more numbers than this.) Given an input n, it is possible to determine the number of numbers printed (including the 1). For a given n this is called the cycle-length of n. In the example above, the cycle length of 22 is 16. For any two numbers i and j you are to determine the maximum cycle length over all numbers between i and j. --Problem description borrowed from UVA. |