# Collatz Conjecture

The Collatz Conjecture or 3x+1 problem can be summarized as follows:

Take any positive integer n. If n is even, divide n by 2 to get n / 2. If n is
odd, multiply n by 3 and add 1 to get 3n + 1. Repeat the process indefinitely.
The conjecture states that no matter which number you start with, you will
always reach 1 eventually.

Given a number n, return the number of steps required to reach 1.

## Examples

Starting with n = 12, the steps would be as follows:

0. 12
1. 6
2. 3
3. 10
4. 5
5. 16
6. 8
7. 4
8. 2
9. 1

Resulting in 9 steps. So for input n = 12, the return value would be 9.

## Setup

Check out [Exercism Help](http://exercism.io/languages/lisp) for instructions to
get started writing Common Lisp. That page will explain how to install and setup
a Lisp implementation and how to run the tests.

## Formatting

While Common Lisp doesn't care about indentation and layout of code,
nor whether you use spaces or tabs, this is an important consideration
for submissions to exercism.io. Excercism.io's code widget cannot
handle mixing of tab and space characters well so using only spaces is recommended to make
the code more readable to the human reviewers. Please review your
editors settings on how to accomplish this. Below are instructions for
popular editors for Common Lisp.

### VIM

Use the following commands to ensure VIM uses only spaces for
indentation:

```vimscript
:set tabstop=2
:set shiftwidth=2
:set expandtab
```

(or as a oneliner `:set tabstop=2 shiftwidth=2 expandtab`). This can
be added to your `~/.vimrc` file to use it all the time.

### Emacs

Emacs is very well suited for editing Common Lisp and has many
powerful add-on packages available. The only thing that one needs to
do with a stock emacs to make it work well with exercism.io is to
evaluate the following code:

`(setq indent-tab-mode nil)`

This can be placed in your `~/.emacs` (or `~/.emacs.d/init.el`) in
order to have it set whenever Emacs is launched.

One suggested add-on for Emacs and Common Lisp is
[SLIME](https://github.com/slime/slime) which offers tight integration
with the REPL; making iterative coding and testing very easy.

## Source

An unsolved problem in mathematics named after mathematician Lothar Collatz [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3x_%2B_1_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3x_%2B_1_problem)

## Submitting Incomplete Solutions
It's possible to submit an incomplete solution so you can see how others have completed the exercise.