homework help

Homework giving you a headache? Math gives you a migraine? Can't quite figure out how to do something in photoshop? Never fear, the other members of CAA share their expertise in this forum.

homework help

Postby jon_jinn » Mon Sep 11, 2006 7:39 pm

yeah. i have some homework on the "Hailstone Sequence" that i'm learning about in math class. there are two questions on my homework that i'm having trouble answering.
(Q) What is the largest stretch of numbers before a Hailstone Sequence enters a loop?
(A) I don't really know. Should i just say infinite? or is that incorrect? should i just say the highest number i can think of or is there really a number that can answer this question?

(Q) What is the highest number reached by a hailstone sequence?
(A) Same thing. Is there really a number that can answer this question? or should i just say the highest number i can think of?

yeah. i really need help on this cause i really don't know the answer :drool:. if you can help me, that'd be greatly appreciated. thanks.
[SIZE="4"]*FASTING FROM CAA (9/25/08 - ???)*[/SIZE]

[SIZE="1"]
"Sometimes we don't present the Gospel well enough for the non-elect to reject it."
- John MacArthur

"In the total expanse of the human life, there is not a single square inch of which Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, 'That is mine'."
- Abraham Kuyper

"God the great Creator of all things doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by His most wise and holy providence, according to His infallible foreknowledge and the free and immutable counsel of His own will, to the praise of the glory of His wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy."
- Westminister Confession of Faith (Chapter 5, Section 1)

"The wisdom of God has found a way for the love of God to deliver sinners from the wrath of God all the while upholding the righteousness of God!!"
- John Piper

"Grace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God by giving sinners the right and power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God!"
-John Piper

"The very One from Whom we need to be saved, is the One Who has saved us."
- R.C. Sproul

"All of Christian life is ceaseless worship of God the Father, through the mediatorship of God the Son, by the indwelling power of God the Spirit, doing what God commands in Scripture, not doing what God forbids in Scripture, in culturally contextualized ways, for the furtherance of the Gospel, when both gathered for adoration, and scattered for action, in joyous response to God's glorious grace."
- Mark Driscoll

"Believers do not pray with the view of informing God about things unknown to Him, or of exciting Him to do His duty, or of urging Him as though He were reluctant. On the contrary, they pray in order that they may arouse themselves to seek Him, that they may exercise their faith in meditating on His promises, that they may relieve themselves from their anxieties by pouring them into His bosom; in a word, that they may declare that from Him alone they hope and expect, both for themselves and for others, all good things."
- Martin Luther

"I have to tell you first that I am ready to die. I have put my affairs in order. Your supreme weapon is killing. My supreme weapon is dying, because when you kill me, people all over Romania will read my books and believe on the God that I preach - even more than they do now."
- Dr. Joseph Ton, the exiled Romanian pastor (quoted by James Montgomery Boice)

"The best prayer I ever prayed had enough sin in it to condemn the whole world."
- John Bunyan

"If the Christian has lost sight of Calvary, that shows that he has lost his way."
- J.I. Packer[/SIZE]
User avatar
jon_jinn
 
Posts: 3261
Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2006 5:49 pm
Location: California

Postby Technomancer » Mon Sep 11, 2006 9:03 pm

jon_jinn wrote:yeah. i have some homework on the "Hailstone Sequence" that i'm learning about in math class. there are two questions on my homework that i'm having trouble answering.
(Q) What is the largest stretch of numbers before a Hailstone Sequence enters a loop?
(A) I don't really know. Should i just say infinite? or is that incorrect? should i just say the highest number i can think of or is there really a number that can answer this question?

(Q) What is the highest number reached by a hailstone sequence?
(A) Same thing. Is there really a number that can answer this question? or should i just say the highest number i can think of?

yeah. i really need help on this cause i really don't know the answer :drool:. if you can help me, that'd be greatly appreciated. thanks.


I'm not sure of the context of this assignment, but unless your teacher is some kind of sadist, I don't think they expect you to be able to solve this problem yourself. Instead, you should approach it as a research question. The reason for this is that while the Hailstone (Collatz) problem is easy to describe is in fact very difficult to analyze. In particular, your first problem is currently unanswerable. Collatz's conjecture states that all such sequences will converge to a repeating loop]http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CollatzProblem.html[/url]
The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in corrrecting its mistakes. Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry—is not even a "subject"—but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning.

Neil Postman
(The End of Education)

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge

Isaac Aasimov
User avatar
Technomancer
 
Posts: 2379
Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2003 11:47 am
Location: Tralfamadore


Return to Tutorials

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 180 guests