What is the example called, where someone was wrongly convinced of a sequence function because of naive induction.

Question

I remember I have seen a classical example of a mistake, where someone was convinced that a sequence defined somehow had a close form, which did in turn work until some very high $n$. I think the first $n$ to fail was 3 or 5 digits.

Is anyone aware of what is on my mind?

Even many correct examples do not prove a conjecture. – Peter Apr 26 '16 at 18:42 — Peter, Apr 26 '16 at 18:42

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:21

2

There's a huge list here of apparently true things that eventually fail. Maybe you can find what you were looking for here?

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:21

Community

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answered Apr 26 '16 at 18:47

Siddharth Bhat

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It actually was in there: n=341, fermat primality test – Coolwater Apr 26 '16 at 18:59

What is the example called, where someone was wrongly convinced of a sequence function because of naive induction.

1 Answers1