an interactive companion

The Number 60714

A universal attractor at every digit length d ≥ 5 (with one structural family of exceptions)

Pick any number with at least five digits. Apply the right rule. Watch it converge, almost always, to 60714.

The rule depends on the input's digit length: there is one rule at d = 5, another at d = 6, and a uniform recipe extending to every higher dimension. At d = 5 and d = 6, every admissible input reaches 60714. At d ≥ 7, almost every input does, but a small, exactly characterized class of inputs collapses to zero instead. The calculator recognizes both cases.

Try it
5 digits or more. Most inputs reach 60714. Try the "doomed input" button to see one that doesn't.

The number 60714 is a fixed point of an explicit family of permutation-pair rules built from its native rule at d = 5, with the family extending to every higher digit length by appending pairs of coefficients that sum to zero. The fixed-point equation K(60714) = 60714 holds at every d ≥ 5.

The dynamics are strict-universal at d = 5 and d = 6: every admissible input reaches 60714. At d ≥ 7, the rule is near-universal: every admissible input outside a small structural class (the escape class of block-aligned multisets and their backward orbits) reaches 60714. Inputs in the escape class collapse to zero. The escape class has a closed-form description and at d ≤ 11 the escape orbits all reach zero within four iterations.

This is a strict generalization of Kaprekar's classical 1949 result. Kaprekar's constant 6174 is universal at d = 4; the routine "stops working" at d = 5 if you keep his rule fixed. The result extended here is that if you let the rule itself vary with d (specifically, by appending zero-sum coefficient pairs), there is a distinguished fixed point, 60714 (sharing 6174's digit multiset plus a zero), whose universality persists across infinitely many dimensions, apart from a structurally characterized escape class.

This calculator is a pedagogical companion to the paper, not a formal verifier. It demonstrates the iteration on individual inputs; the formal claims of the paper are established by the Python scripts and proofs in the repository.

Full paper, the proof, the 506-fixed-point classification at d = 6, the closed-form description of the escape class, and reproducibility scripts: github.com/clayelmore/Kaprekar-60714