Collatz Island 871
Digital Print
2024
This is a rendering of the Collatz sequence starting at 871 and visualized as a polar island.
Background and Inspiration
The Collatz sequence begins with a positive integer \(n\). If \(n\) is even, it is divided by 2; if \(n\) is odd, the result is \(3n + 1\). It remains unknown whether repeating this process will eventually lead to the value 1. For the starting number 871, the sequence progresses as follows: 871, 2614, 1307, 3922, ..., eventually reaching 4, 2, and then 1 after 178 steps. The island is created using the binary representations of these numbers where the initial number, 871, is the left-most stack of bits.
