Ternary Digits of Powers of Two

Abstract

The \textit{ternary digits of $2^n$} are a finite sequence of 0s, 1s, and 2s. It is a natural question to ask whether the frequency of any string of 0s, 1s, and 2s in this sequence approaches the same limit for all strings of the same length, as the exponent $n$ approaches infinity (\textit{Uniform Distribution in the limit}). Currently the answer to this question is unknown. Even a much weaker conjecture by Erdös is still open. But we present computational results (up to $n = 10^6$) supporting uniform distribution in the limit. In this context, we discuss implications of Benford's Law and a special case of Baker's Theorem. Then we investigate the infinite sequence of ternary digits of $\log_3(2)$. There are analogous questions about the distribution of strings of 0s, 1s, and 2s in that sequence. If there is uniform distribution in the limit, then $\log_3(2)$ is called \textit{normal to base 3}. In the absence of definitive results, we can offer again computational evidence from the first $10^6$ ternary digits of $\log_3(2)$, strongly supporting the conjecture that $\log_3(2)$ is normal to base 3.