BAKUAGE OFFERS OVER US$1 MILLION PRIZE TO SOLVE 84-YEAR-OLD MATH BRAINTEASER

KUALA LUMPUR, July 7 (Bernama) -- Bakuage Co Ltd headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo, has announced offering a 120 million Japanese yen prize to anyone unravelling the Collatz conjecture, an unsolved mathematical problem.

According to a statement, 120 million Japanese yen is about US$1,085,000 which is based on US$1 = 110.50 Japanese yen as of June 29. (US$1 = RM4.160)

The Collatz conjecture repeatedly applying the following sequences will eventually result in 1: starting with any positive integer, divide it by 2 in the case of an even number and multiply it by 3 and add 1 in the case of any odd number.

The conjecture is named after Lothar Collatz, who introduced the idea in 1937. Since then, it has remained unsolved with its truth not yet verified.

Prize money is sometimes offered on an unsolved problem in mathematics. For example, a prize of US$1 million was posted for the solution to each of seven unsolved millennium problems announced by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000.

Bakuage decided on the latest prize, hoping to contribute to the development of mathematics. The company has chosen the Collatz conjecture because it thought many people can be easily interested in the problem, which itself is easy to understand.

A prize of 120 million Japanese yen will be paid to whoever has elucidated the truth of the Collatz conjecture.

For details, please visit the prize site at https://mathprize.net/posts/collatz-conjecture/

-- BERNAMA