Posted on 02/23/2016 3:09:27 AM PST by LibWhacker
you gonna talk about my weight, have the guts to do it to my face. :)
Divided by itself and 1 without a remainder? All numbers are like that as far as I can tell. 4 divided by 4 is 1 and 4 divided by 1 is 4 so why isn’t 4 a prime number?
Primes are positive integers that are ONLY divisible by themselves and one. Four is also divisible by two, and so is not prime.
Oh I see it could by divided by another number as well. I’m not seeing the amazing significance.
bump for a read later.
Primes lie at the core of Number Theory. There are tons of amazing facts about them. Many important theorems have been proven about them. Many others defy proof (and hold back number theory because of it), etc. Take any elementary algebra course and you will begin to learn about primes. Ten years later as you are finishing up your PhD in mathematics, it’s likely you will STILL be learning things about them.
Wow, talk about coincidence, me and my buddies were discussing this very topic last Friday night in the bar......
Yeah, like I learned that some people are superstitious about the number 13 by reading the article. I think in Asian cultures they are superstitious about the number 4 so what’s the prime significance there?
Because 4 can also be divided by 2.....
Oh, and then the practical things are there as well. Just Google ‘encryption and prime numbers.’ Prime numbers are extremely important in safeguarding our nation’s secrets. Figure out a way to break today’s codes (you will necessarily be working with prime numbers), and you will probably very quickly find yourself kept under lock and key! Well, I don’t know about the latter, but you will probably be sworn to secrecy and be forbidden to publish anything on the subject in the open marketplace.
Nowhere does the article claim that every superstition flows from attitudes about prime numbers.
I don’t understand unlucky 13 relationship to Judas.
Judas was one of the 12. How would he make 13?
Yes, it is. Probably the worst explanation of the Sieve of Eratosthenes I ever read, overall not bad. I recall the first programming problem I ever had in school was to find the prime numbers below 100 using Fortran. I didn't know about the Sieve of Eratosthenes, but did know that any composite number had to have at least one factor less than or equal to its square root.
If you pick a number, N, "at random" from the set of all integers, what is the approximate likelihood that it is prime? Curiously enough, 1/ln(N). (ln(*) is the natural logarithm of *). The expected number of primes in the interal M to N is equal to the integral from x = M to x = N of dx/ln(x). The approximation gets relatively better as M get large. (Limit as M -> Inf and M-N -> Inf of the integral over the count of primes approaches unity.)
It also tries to tie some religious significance to 3 and 13 ( trinity and last supper ) implying some prime number application about it. Sounds kinda wacky.
Thanks for the post! I am no mathematician but...
iI am surprised to see so little about primes in this “primer!”
Lol yes... No fault of the poster but as Cruz would say this article is to primes what Carter was to the Presidency.
I went to a new subdivision and bought lots one, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 11. It’s prime real estate.
LOL...good one.
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