Lychrel Numbers in Base 10: A Probabilistic Approach

Abstract

For decades, Lychrel numbers have been studied on many bases. Their existence has been proven in base 2, 11 or 17. This paper presents a probabilistic proof of the existence of Lychrel number in base 10 and provides some properties which enable a mathematical extraction of new Lychrel numbers from existing ones. This probabilistic approach has the advantage of being extendable to other bases. The results show that palindromes can also be Lychrel numbers.