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News stories have claimed they may have — but is this true?
Yes you can know! And the answer is that there are always more even numbers in the sequence. If you assume the 50% hypothesis to be correct, it doesn't hold up. This is because if you have an odd number, the next term will always be even. This is because an odd number times an odd number (odd n times 3) is ALWAYS odd. That is true because if you multiply odd numbers, you can factor each number out, and 2 will not be a factor. This means that the resulting number cannot be divisible by 2 either, meaning it is odd. Anyways, if we assume that the 50% hypothesis is true, we know that an odd number will always be followed by an even one. So if the 50% hypothesis holds up, then every even number would have to precede an odd one. That doesn't hold up because if something is divisible by 4 for instance, you will be able to divide by two twice before you reach an odd number. Since the final cycle is always 4,2,1, and includes 2 even numbers and only one odd, there are always more even numbers than odd ones.