Let α be a positive irrational real number. (Without loss of generality assume 0 < α < 1.) The characteristic sequence of α is

f(α) =f1f2 ···, where fn = [(n + 1)α] - [nα].

We make some observations on the various descriptions of the characteristic sequence of α which have appeared in the literature. We then refine one of these descriptions in order to obtain a very simple derivation of an arithmetic expression for [nα] which appears in A. S. Fraenkel, J. Levitt, and M. Shimshoni [17]. Some concluding remarks give conditions on n which are equivalent to fn = 1.

Let α be a positive irrational real number, and let fα (n) = [(n + l)α] — [nα] — [α],n > 1, where [x] denotes the greatest integer not exceeding x. It is shown that the sequence fα has a certain 'substitution property' if and only if α is the root of a quadratic equation over the rationals.

A Pisot sequence is a sequence of integers defined recursively by the formula - . If 0 < a0 < a1 then an+1/an converges to a limit θ. We ask whether any rational p/q other than an integer can ever occur as such a limit. For p/q > q/2, the answer is no. However, if p/q < q/2 then the question is shown to be equivalent to a stopping time problem related to the notorious 3x + 1 problem and to a question of Mahler concerning the powers of 3/2. Although some interesting statistical properties of these stopping time problems can be established, we are forced to conclude that the question raised in the title of this paper is perhaps more intractable than it might appear.