Eric Angelini wrote:
... take any digit of (a); when written in french, this digit has as much letters as described by the next digit :
UN (2 letters) DEUX (4 letters) QUATRE (6 letters) SIX (3 letters) TROIS (5 letters) CINQ (4 letters) QUATRE (6 letters) ...
In English, the map (n -> # letters in the name of n) always ends up at its unique fixed point: FOUR has 4 letters. One of my early Intelligencer Entertainments columns riffed on the slighly more interesting point of view where you say that the map is, instead, (n -> product of lengths of words in the name of n). So 24 -> "twenty four" -> 6*4 = 24. If you find this amusing, the column is here: http://people.brandeis.edu/~kleber/Papers/twenty-four.pdf --Michael -- It is very dark and after 2000. If you continue you are likely to be eaten by a bleen.