OFFSET
0,1
COMMENTS
It's still not known whether every 3x + 1 sequence reaches 1. But for the 5x + 1 variant, the answer is clearly no, as this sequence demonstrates: 26 is first encountered as 5 * 5 + 1, but every time afterwards as half 52.
However, there are still unanswered questions about the 5x + 1 problem. Kontorovich and Lagarias (2009) say that it is conjectured that there are very few periodic orbits, one of which is the one exhibited by this sequence.
LINKS
Colin Barker, Table of n, a(n) for n = 0..1000
Alex V. Kontorovich & Jeffrey C. Lagarias, Stochastic Models for the 3x+1 and 5x+1 Problems arXiv:0910.1944 [math.NT], 2009.
Index entries for linear recurrences with constant coefficients, signature (0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1).
FORMULA
a(0) = 5; a(n) = 5*a(n - 1) + 1 if a(n - 1) is odd, a(n) = a(n - 1)/2 otherwise.
From Colin Barker, Oct 04 2019: (Start)
G.f.: (5 + 26*x + 13*x^2 + 66*x^3 + 33*x^4 + 166*x^5 + 83*x^6 + 416*x^7 + 208*x^8 + 104*x^9 + 47*x^10) / ((1 - x)*(1 + x)*(1 - x + x^2 - x^3 + x^4)*(1 + x + x^2 + x^3 + x^4)).
a(n) = a(n-10) for n>10.
(End)
EXAMPLE
5 is odd, so it's followed by 5 * 5 + 1 = 26.
26 is even, so it's followed by 26/2 = 13.
MATHEMATICA
NestList[If[EvenQ[#], #/2, 5# + 1] &, 5, 100]
PROG
(Magma) [n eq 1 select 5 else IsOdd(Self(n-1)) select 5*Self(n-1)+1 else Self(n-1) div 2: n in [1..100]]; // Vincenzo Librandi, Jun 21 2015
(PARI) Vec((5 + 26*x + 13*x^2 + 66*x^3 + 33*x^4 + 166*x^5 + 83*x^6 + 416*x^7 + 208*x^8 + 104*x^9 + 47*x^10) / ((1 - x)*(1 + x)*(1 - x + x^2 - x^3 + x^4)*(1 + x + x^2 + x^3 + x^4)) + O(x^50)) \\ Colin Barker, Oct 04 2019
CROSSREFS
KEYWORD
nonn,easy
AUTHOR
Alonso del Arte, Jun 20 2015
STATUS
approved