Douglas Hofstadter’s Pulitzer-prize-winning book Gödel, Escher, Bach contains many interesting mathematical puzzles, many of which can be expressed in the form of computer programs. In Chapter XII, Hofstadter mentions a wonderful problem that is well within the scope of the control statements from Chapter 4. The problem can be expressed as follows:
Pick some positive integer and call it n. If n is even, divide it by two. If n is odd, multiply it by three and add one. Continue this process until n is equal to one.On page 401 of the Vintage edition, Hofstadter illustrates this process with the following example, starting with the number 15:
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