[ExI] prime

[Tomaz Kristan]

Rather think what the primes can do for you, and NOT what can you do for
primes!


On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 6:57 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

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> A friend who knows how I am, and is my friend anyway, sent me this link:**
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> http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/02/volunteer-discovers-a-new-17-million-digit-prime-number/
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> in which is found the following comment:****
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> "A Mersenne prime is a prime number that can be written in the form Mp =
> 2n-1, and they’re extremely rare finds. Of all the numbers between 0 and
> 2^25,964,951-1 there are 1,622,441 that are prime, but only 42 are Mersenne
> primes."****
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> Oh boy, from the standpoint of orders of magnitude, this might be the
> largest error in the history of publishing.  The number of primes between 0
> and 25,964,951-1 is not 1,622,441.  It is a number on the order of 1E(seven
> million) rather than on the order of 1E6.  So they missed it by more than 7
> million orders of magnitude.  I know of no other error of that size.  That
> error is unimaginably larger than estimating the mass of the visible
> universe at less than the mass of an electron, if you measure it in the
> number of orders of magnitude between the right answer and the given answer.
> ****
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> What they meant is there are 1,622,441 Mersenne numbers between 0 and
> 2^25964,951-1, a Mersenne number being defined as a number of the form
> 2^P-1 where p is prime.****
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> But we will forgive.  Probably some prime virgin wrote the article.  ****
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> I on the other hand, am just the opposite of a prime virgin.  I am a total
> prime slut, a complete prime whore.  I will do anything for primes,
> anything.****
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> spike****
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