Posted on 05/10/2009 5:17:09 PM PDT by decimon
In a recent study, Bartolo Luque and Lucas Lacasa of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in Spain have discovered a new pattern in primes that has surprisingly gone unnoticed until now. They found that the distribution of the leading digit in the prime number sequence can be described by a generalization of Benford’s law. In addition, this same pattern also appears in another number sequence, that of the leading digits of nontrivial Riemann zeta zeros, which is known to be related to the distribution of primes. Besides providing insight into the nature of primes, the finding could also have applications in areas such as fraud detection and stock market analysis.
(Excerpt) Read more at physorg.com ...
Just goes to show that we can find GOD in the smallest of places.
lol!
It would be wrong of me to describe something that I don’t understand as worthless, because what do I know? Well, at least this little study didn’t cost me anything. I hope.
And also in cryptography, relating to Public Key Encryption. It might be that it wasn't unnoticed, but the notice was just in classified papers.
Are you joking? Don't you realize what advanced derivative securities can be...derived from this?
This is hugh. I am series.
That’s the first thing I thought.
Quite a claim in a math thread.
Have you been there? How small is the university exactly?
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in Spain
I doubt God hangs out in a Spanish university, but who knows?
>>I am series.
>
>Quite a claim in a math thread.
Not unlike “I Am Legend”
Closer than you think. Diffie knew.
Well, he didn't claim to be Infinite Series.
Well, it seems to me that this application to Public Key Encryption means that Public Key Encryption will be useless. If prime numbers can be predicted, then the encryption is broken.
As I recall, Public Key Encryption relies on the multiplication of two very large prime numbers. As things used to stand, it was impossible to predict where those primes fall in the sequence of integers. If now there is some algorithm that can predict where those primes exist, them it would be possible to use that algorithm to break the public key. Good-bye security.
Actually, Al Gore made this discovery, but being the modest guy that he is, decided to let someone else get the credit.
“Since the late ‘70s, researchers have known that prime numbers themselves, when taken in very large data sets, are not distributed according to Benford’s law. Instead, the first digit distribution of primes seems to be approximately uniform. However, as Luque and Lacasa point out, smaller data sets (intervals) of primes exhibit a clear bias in first digit distribution. The researchers noticed another pattern: the larger the data set of primes they analyzed, the more closely the first digit distribution approached uniformity. In light of this, the researchers wondered if there existed any pattern underlying the trend toward uniformity as the prime interval increases to infinity.”
You mean all the prime numbers between 900000 and 999999 all start with 9? I never would have guessed that! How much of my tax money was used to finance the discovery of this completely obvious result?
I love this stuff.
Ever since I first trisected an angle with just a compass and a straightedge, I’ve loved this stuff.
Que?
Ding, ding, ding - we have a winnah!
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