HP Prime Program: ULAM

ULAM - Using Ulam's Conjecture to determine the number of steps it takes to reduce an integer N to 1 using the following rules:

If N is odd: N = 3×N+1
If N is even: N=N/2

9/24/2013

Program:

EXPORT ULAM(N)
BEGIN
LOCAL C;
PRINT();
REPEAT
IF FP(N/2)==0 THEN
N:=N/2;
ELSE
N:=3*N+1;
END;
C:=C+1;
PRINT(N);
UNTIL N==1;
RETURN C;
END;

Examples:
ULAM(69): 208, 104, 52, 26, 13, 40, 20, 10, 5, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1 (14 steps)

ULAM(84): 42, 21, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1 (9 steps)


This blog is property of Edward Shore. 2013