What is "sociable number"

n. (context number theory English) Any of a sequence of numbers having the property that the sum of the divisors of each, excluding itself, is equal to the next number in the sequence; in the case of the last number of the sequence, the sum of the divisors, excluding that number, is equal to the first number of the sequence.

Sociable numbers are numbers whose aliquot sums form a cyclic sequence that begins and ends with the same number. They are generalizations of the concepts of amicable numbers and perfect numbers. The first two sociable sequences, or sociable chains, were discovered and named by the Belgian mathematician Paul Poulet in 1918. In a set of sociable numbers, each number is the sum of the proper factors of the preceding number, i.e., the sum excludes the preceding number itself. For the sequence to be sociable, the sequence must be cyclic and return to its starting point.

The period of the sequence, or order of the set of sociable numbers, is the number of numbers in this cycle.

If the period of the sequence is 1, the number is a sociable number of order 1, or a perfect number—for example, the proper divisors of 6 are 1, 2, and 3, whose sum is again 6. A pair of amicable numbers is a set of sociable numbers of order 2. There are no known sociable numbers of order 3.

It is an open question whether all numbers end up at either a sociable number or at a prime (and hence 1), or, equivalently, whether there exist numbers whose aliquot sequence never terminates, and hence grows without bound.