Sociable Chain/Examples/12,496

Example of Sociable Chain
The longest known sociable chain, at time of writing ($9$th March $2017$) is of order $28$.

Its smallest element is $12 \, 496$.

Proof
Let $s \left({n}\right)$ denote the aliquot sum of $n$.

By definition:
 * $s \left({n}\right) = \sigma \left({n}\right) - n$

where $\sigma \left({n}\right)$ denotes the $\sigma$ function.

Thus: