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A digit product $P(n)$ of a natural number $n$ is given by the product of its decimal digits. For example:

$$P(1234) = 24,\;\;\; P(24) = 8,\;\;\; P(8) = 8$$ $$1\times2\times3\times4 = 24, \;\;\; 2\times4 = 8$$

Clearly $P(x) \leq x$ as a number with digits "abcd..." gives a product less than $a\times10\times10\times10...$. So

$$P(x) < x\;\;\; \text{or}\;\;\; P(x) < 10$$

Letting $P^n(x)$ represent applying $P$ $n$ times, I have a question about $$P^\infty(x) = \lim_{n\rightarrow\infty}P^n(x)$$

The larger the number the more likely it is that it will contain a zero. So, for a random $x$ we expect that almost always $P^\infty(x)=0$. But we can get rid of all these from the number line:

$$S = \{x\in\mathbb{N}_0|P^\infty(x)\neq0\}$$

What is the distribution of $P^\infty(s)$ for $s\in S$? How likely are the remaining digits? Is one infinitely more likely than the others?

Here's a graph of $10$ to $1,000,000$: WTF!!!

Lucas
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  • This isn't particularly helpful to this precise problem, but is very much the same sort of problem. If $ d(n) $ is the digit sum, then repeatably apply $ d(n) $ will eventually result in $ n \mod 9 $. Also, another interesting thing to consider for this problem is the rate of convergence. – Jon Claus May 24 '13 at 02:26
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    Even numbers must be infinitely more often than odd, as even if a single digit in $x$ is even, $P^\infty (x)$ will be even. – polkjh May 24 '13 at 02:42
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    @polkjh Interestingly, they make it more likely to be zero and not count too. – Lucas May 24 '13 at 03:10
  • @Lucas Yes, that argument is not enough by itself. Do you have any upper bound for number of $x < N$ resulting in $0$, for a given $N$? – polkjh May 24 '13 at 03:37
  • @polkjh Not right now. I'll have a think. Lower bound is much easier. – Lucas May 24 '13 at 15:08

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Let $$T=\{n | 0,1~\mathrm{do~not~occur~in~the~decimal~expansion~of~n}\}$$

I'll make this Conjecture: $T\cap S$ is finite.

That is, there are only finitely many $n$ that don't have the digit 1 in their decimal representation and that have $P^\infty(n)>0$.

The case where all of the digits are the same (and not 1) is covered by a long-standing conjecture of Furstenberg (Conjecture 2' on page 25 of this paper I cited in my answer to this tangentially related question), which says that large enough powers of any number (not a power of 10) contain any finite pattern of digits.

In particular for this problem, for $2\le d \le 9$ there is a $K(d)$ large enough such $d^k$ has a zero in its decimal expansion for $k>K(d)$ and so the decimal numbers $n=ddd\cdots d$ with $k$ repeated $d$s have $P^2(n)=0$.

I think this can be generalized to the case where different digits are allowed, but I only have a very abstract argument. All patterns of digits appear in large powers of $d_1$ because the decimal representation for $d_1^{k_1}$ is "random" in some sense, and multiplying by another $d_2^{k_2}$ gives something else that is still random (unless 10 divides $d_1\times d_2$). So for $k_1+k_2$ large enough $n=d_1^{k_1}d_2^{k_2}$ will contain a zero in its decimal expansion. And continuing the argument, for $k_1+k_2+k_3+k_4$ large enough every $n\in T$ with $$ P(n)=2^{a_1}3^{a_2}4^{a_2}5^{a_2}6^{a_2}7^{a_2}8^{a_2}9^{a_2} = 2^{k_1}3^{k_2}5^{k_3}7^{k_4} $$ will contain a zero in its decimal expansion and will have $P^2(n)=0$.

A computer check of exponents up to 200 suggests that the largest value $k_1+k_2+k_3+k_4$ can take is 44, and the largest $n\in T$ with $P^\infty(n)\ne 0$ have $P(n)=2^{39}3^3 7^2$.

Let $L(n)$ be the number of digits in the decimal representation of $n$.

Given $n\in T$ with $L(n)<N$, we can mix the digits of $n$ with $N-L(n)$ additional 1 digits to get $N$-digit numbers $n_1,n_2,\dots$ with $P(n)=P(n_1)=P(n_2)=\cdots$. For example, let $n=2677,N=10$, and $$ n_2=1111112677, n_2=1111771216, n_3=7172611111, \ldots \\ P(n)=588=P(n_1)=P(n_2)=P(n_3)=\cdots $$ If the number distinct permutations of the digits of $n$ is $L(n)!/R(n)$, then the number of ways we can generate $N$-digit numbers from $n$ this way is $$ c(n,N) = \frac{N!}{(N-L(n))!R(n)} = \frac{N^{L(n)}}{R(n)}-O(N^{L(n)-1}) $$ In our example $c(2677,N)=N^4/2-O(N^3)$.

Operating under the conjecture that $L(n)$ is bounded for $n\in T\cap S$, for large $N$ the $N$-digit numbers in $S$ will be mainly composed of $1s$, and their count will be dominated by $N^{L(n)}$ for the longest $n$s.

My computer search turned up the longest $n$ as follows: $$ \begin{array}{c|c|c|c} P^\infty(n) & P(n) & L(n) & c(n,N) \\ \hline 2 & 2^{26}3^3 & 29 & N^{29}/(2.4\times 10^{27}) \\ 3 & 3 & 1 & N \\ 4 & 2^{23}3^7 7 & 31 & N^{31}/(1.3\times 10^{26}) \\ 5 & 3^5 5 7^2 & 8 & N^8/240\\ 6 & 2^{24} 3^6 7^6 & 36 & N^{36}/(3.2\times 10^{29}) \\ 7 & 7 & 1 & N \\ 8 & 2^{39} 3^3 7^2 & 44 & N^{44}/(2.4\times 10^{47})\\ 9 & 3^2 & 2 & N^2/2 \end{array} $$ where the right column gives the asymptotic behavior for very large $N$. There is also only one $N$-digit number consisting of all 1s with $P(n)=1$.

So even though up to 50 million the histogram shows a pattern similar to yours: $$ \begin{array}{c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c} P^\infty & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5 & 6 & 7 & 8 & 9 \\ \hline \mathrm{count} & 8 & 317446 & 36 & 27070 & 16325 & 1336881 & 35 & 697581 & 119 \end{array} $$ my results suggest that eventually $P^\infty=4$ will dominate $P^\infty=2$, and in the large $N$ limit almost all of $S$ will be made up of numbers with thirty-nine 2s, three 3s, two 7s and a large number of 1s, each with $P^\infty=8$.

Zander
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  • That's really interesting. Do you have any additional reasons for thinking $L(n)=44$ is the largest. Though 156 orders of magnitude is pretty strong. How did you search so quickly? The brute force check would take a very long time. – Lucas May 25 '13 at 18:35
  • @Lucas I only checked numbers of the form $3^j5^k7^l$ or $2^i3^j7^l$ (since we know there's a zero if 2 and 5 both are factors) then I let the exponents go from 0 to 200. This doesn't quite mean I've checked all numbers in $T$ with $<200$ digits, though, since the number with 150 8s would have 2^450. I don't think I can produce a formal argument why this would be the bound though, since I think even with powers of a single number these are still open problems. – Zander May 25 '13 at 19:29
  • But if you think it's plausible to consider digits in the middle of the number as occurring with something like a uniform distribution, then the probability of no 0 or 5 occurring gets small. For 100 digits the probability is like $10^{-10}$ whereas for $n=2^i3^j7^k$ we have $i\le 332,j\le 209,k\le 118$ or fewer than $10^7$ candidates. This is just hand-waving, though. – Zander May 25 '13 at 19:45
  • Hand waving comes with the territory. – Lucas May 25 '13 at 20:39