[ExI] mersenne primes again

[BillK]

On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 5:42 AM, spike  wrote:
> Ja.  It is of particular interest to me, since the field of prognostication
> using statistical techniques is so maddeningly fraught with ways to fool
> oneself.  I did it myself, with a technique which is described in Damien's
> The Spike.  I used superposition of probability distribution functions to
> make a prediction of when the next record prime number would be discovered
> back in 1999.  I extrapolated the growth rate of GIMPS, then looked at the
> cumulative probability over a time span, and just reported the date upon
> which we would have accumulated a 50% chance.
>
> Turns out it was remarkably close to right, but for the wrong reasons: I had
> compensating errors.  GIMPS grew much faster than I anticipated, but the gap
> was anomalously large.  That flawed technique worked pretty well, three
> times in a row.  I fooled myself, but I had fun.  I made a buttload of
> "money" on Ideas Futures with that, but I feel the need to return the
> "money" somehow, since I wasn't really "right."  There is no way to return
> the "money" in IFX.
>
>

Have you read this article?
<http://primes.utm.edu/notes/faq/NextMersenne.html>

This graph looks interesting to me.
<http://primes.utm.edu/gifs/cum_gaps.gif>

BillK