OFFSET
1,1
COMMENTS
te Riele noted that of the first initial values <= 10^5 only 459 have a trajectory that reaches 1 and conjectured that almost all trajectories tend to infinity.
LINKS
H. J. J. te Riele, Iteration of number-theoretic functions, Nieuw Archief v. Wiskunde, (4) 1 (1983), 345-360. See Example III.3.
EXAMPLE
a(1) = 7 since 7 of the initial values 1 to 10 (all except 5, 8, and 10) have a trajectory that reaches 1 (their A306944 value is not -1).
MATHEMATICA
f[n_] := If[Divisible[n, 3], n/3, Floor[n*Sqrt[3]]]; itnum[n_] := Module[{k = n, inc = False, c = 0}, While[k > 1, kk = f[k]; If[inc && kk > k, c = -1; Break[]]; inc = kk > k; k = kk; c++]; c]; p=10; s={}; c=0; Do[i=itnum[n]; If[i>-1, c++]; If[n==p, AppendTo[s, c]; p*=10], {n, 1, 10000}]; s
CROSSREFS
KEYWORD
nonn,more
AUTHOR
Amiram Eldar, Mar 18 2019
STATUS
approved