On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 3:37 PM, John Randall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Another problem from HAKMEM. > > Suppose we start with a number, write it out in words, take the > length, and keep going. For English, the result will always converge > to 4 (and, as far as I can tell, to 3 for Chinese).
Wow, this is in HAKMEM? I never noticed it. I only knew this problem from the book Csákány Béla: Diszkrét matematikai játékok (Polygon, Szeged, 1998, page 182). Now that I re-read that part of the book, it does indeed credit Gosper and Schroppel (who are authors of HAKMEM). The books says that everything converges to 4 in English; that in Hungarian every number either converges to 4 or falls to the cycle (2 5), and it also gives a proof. It mentions some other languages in brief but the results for at least some of those seems bogus to me so I won't repeat them. Ambrus ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
