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Regarding the novel "Contact", would it be appropriate to add under Applications that it has been suggested that a sequence of prime numbers, being clearly distinguishable from background noise, would be a good way to catch the attention of ETI's? For instance, a message sent from Arecibo as part of the SETI program encoded data in a 23x73 grid, using prime numbers to assist in any decoding. Other proposed methods resemble the fictional alien signal in "Contact", prefacing a signal with a sequence of primes in order to say "hey, pay attention, this is information, not noise!", since it can probably be safely assumed that a species that has radio understands primes. Would anyone object to my adding this application of prime numbers to the article? - Kasreyn 12:44, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
/Prime/ numbers are of course of /prime/ importance - Was that really nessecary? :) -- Thenickdude 02:59, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm removing the number template from the prime number page, because prime numbers are not apart of quantity or listed in that template. Is a template for integer sequences in order? Timothy Clemans 06:19, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Essay and discussion moved to User:BenCawaling/Essay. Gandalf61 08:35, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
I moved here the following comment by 68.38.126.159 from the article. -- EJ 04:46, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I've also seen the beginnings of a formula for prime numbers. Consider the rule that if a number(N) is odd, you should square it, then subtract the number that is one above the original number. (N*N)-(N+1)= a prime number. If the original number is even, then it should be squared and the number one below the original number should be subtracted from it. (N*N)-(N-1)= a prime number. This only works for N = Integers less than ten. Once double didgits are involved, the rule will mutate in a fashion that is unbeknown to me at this time. Any help would be greatly appreciated. P.S. I will consent to the idea that 1 is not a prime number due to prime factorizations, but the rule still seems valid. (Zepher)
Hiya. I'm sorta new to this wiki thing, I've only done a few minor edits before this. I agreed with most of the discussion on Prime numbers in nature, that the cicadas bit was the only bit worth mentioning, none of the others were present in nature because they were prime, they were just coincidences. So I Copied the cicadas bit, twiddled it a little bit, and added a little bit explaining that not every occurence of a prime in nature is significant. I couldn't, however, bring myself to delete the link to the 'main article', since it hasn't been deleted yet. Should I?
Or have I overstepped the mark here; should I have left it how it was?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bumnut ( talk • contribs) 08:03, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Someone should check the news about theses cicadas, I'm sure I read something saying this is actually false; I changed the article to show this uncrtainity.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.206.124.48 ( talk • contribs) 20:47, 10 December 2006
I am going to remove the following "properties" from the list:
The first one says that any prime greater than 3 can not be a multiple of 2 or 3; the second says that any prime greater than 2 can not be even, and the last one is the same as the first one, so that they are all trivial, even written in terms of modulos. Schutz 12:48, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
This notice was slapped on the top of the main article.
{{mergefrom|357686312646216567629137}}
This is inappropriate, as articles are meant for readers who should not be distracted by editing notes.
Moreover the suggestion that the content of the article in question is significant enough to include in the article itself seems unsupportable. This is a curious property of the decimal expansion of an integer, and is of very minor mathematical significance. Decimal expansions in general are of little mathematical significance - certainly no more than many other bases - and their relationship to prime numbers is of no particular importance. Elroch 00:02, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Good idea to add a trivia section, although the addition uses an unreasonable amount of space for a quirky fact with very little mathematical significance. Elroch 15:56, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Change section heading —
to —
Change subsection heading —
to —
Change the quoted phrase —
to —
Change the paragraph —
to —
Delete the paragraph (it is nonsensically circular) —
Add the paragraph (as second-to-the-last paragraph in this subsection) —
Interesting how the phrase "there is an ... number of ..." seemed perfectly correct to me (and presumably many mathematicians as it survived here a month) until it was just changed. Google suggests this choice is used about a hundred times less than "there are a ... number of ...", which makes it rather eccentric to argue for the former. Doesn't seem any reason why the grammatical rule should be different from "there is a herd of cattle in the field", where the common choice is the opposite one, but common usuage wins in what is not really a technical use of language. Elroch 13:01, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I added the program to find primes im not good at explinaing so if nyone else can? or if you want to contact me im here Wolfmankurd 21:20, 29 April 2006 (UTC) also, do I need to write some sort of release copywrtie thing like for images.
Before everyone starts spending too much time writing programs in their favourite language, it may be a good idea to discuss what we need on the page... Personaly, I am not even sure if we need the explicit program to be part of the article; it is rather trivial and is well summarised in less than 2 lines of text in the section "How this works". In addition, the article is already quite long and dense. However, if the consensus is that this program is worth keeping, I'd suggest to follow Donald Knuth's practice (in The Art of Computer Programming) and describe it as an algorithm rather than as a specific implemtntation (and no, I am not suggesting to write it in assembly language...). Schutz 12:03, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
Please stop adding programs to the page. We are already up to 3 versions of the same program; do we really want this page to look like List of hello world programs ? I am waiting a little bit more since there has been only one comment above (thanks, Gandalf61 !), but if noone else comments, I will remove all the programs soon. Schutz 06:35, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
OK, so pseudocode for the sieve of Atkin is not that difficult after all. However, the current version in the article got it all wrong. Traversing the list of candidates and computing the number of solutions for each of them separately brings the running time back to , just like trial division, hence it is much slower than the sieve of Eratosthenes. It has to be done differently, I may try to fix it later. -- EJ 19:26, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Just wondering: how can there be an even digit in any truncatable prime?
For what it's worth the quote from (Gowers 2002) is wrong, mathematically. It may be a correct quote, but it's wrong. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:38, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
As I open the edit window I just see '<references/>' inside.
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | → | Archive 9 |
Regarding the novel "Contact", would it be appropriate to add under Applications that it has been suggested that a sequence of prime numbers, being clearly distinguishable from background noise, would be a good way to catch the attention of ETI's? For instance, a message sent from Arecibo as part of the SETI program encoded data in a 23x73 grid, using prime numbers to assist in any decoding. Other proposed methods resemble the fictional alien signal in "Contact", prefacing a signal with a sequence of primes in order to say "hey, pay attention, this is information, not noise!", since it can probably be safely assumed that a species that has radio understands primes. Would anyone object to my adding this application of prime numbers to the article? - Kasreyn 12:44, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
/Prime/ numbers are of course of /prime/ importance - Was that really nessecary? :) -- Thenickdude 02:59, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm removing the number template from the prime number page, because prime numbers are not apart of quantity or listed in that template. Is a template for integer sequences in order? Timothy Clemans 06:19, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Essay and discussion moved to User:BenCawaling/Essay. Gandalf61 08:35, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
I moved here the following comment by 68.38.126.159 from the article. -- EJ 04:46, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I've also seen the beginnings of a formula for prime numbers. Consider the rule that if a number(N) is odd, you should square it, then subtract the number that is one above the original number. (N*N)-(N+1)= a prime number. If the original number is even, then it should be squared and the number one below the original number should be subtracted from it. (N*N)-(N-1)= a prime number. This only works for N = Integers less than ten. Once double didgits are involved, the rule will mutate in a fashion that is unbeknown to me at this time. Any help would be greatly appreciated. P.S. I will consent to the idea that 1 is not a prime number due to prime factorizations, but the rule still seems valid. (Zepher)
Hiya. I'm sorta new to this wiki thing, I've only done a few minor edits before this. I agreed with most of the discussion on Prime numbers in nature, that the cicadas bit was the only bit worth mentioning, none of the others were present in nature because they were prime, they were just coincidences. So I Copied the cicadas bit, twiddled it a little bit, and added a little bit explaining that not every occurence of a prime in nature is significant. I couldn't, however, bring myself to delete the link to the 'main article', since it hasn't been deleted yet. Should I?
Or have I overstepped the mark here; should I have left it how it was?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bumnut ( talk • contribs) 08:03, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Someone should check the news about theses cicadas, I'm sure I read something saying this is actually false; I changed the article to show this uncrtainity.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.206.124.48 ( talk • contribs) 20:47, 10 December 2006
I am going to remove the following "properties" from the list:
The first one says that any prime greater than 3 can not be a multiple of 2 or 3; the second says that any prime greater than 2 can not be even, and the last one is the same as the first one, so that they are all trivial, even written in terms of modulos. Schutz 12:48, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
This notice was slapped on the top of the main article.
{{mergefrom|357686312646216567629137}}
This is inappropriate, as articles are meant for readers who should not be distracted by editing notes.
Moreover the suggestion that the content of the article in question is significant enough to include in the article itself seems unsupportable. This is a curious property of the decimal expansion of an integer, and is of very minor mathematical significance. Decimal expansions in general are of little mathematical significance - certainly no more than many other bases - and their relationship to prime numbers is of no particular importance. Elroch 00:02, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Good idea to add a trivia section, although the addition uses an unreasonable amount of space for a quirky fact with very little mathematical significance. Elroch 15:56, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Change section heading —
to —
Change subsection heading —
to —
Change the quoted phrase —
to —
Change the paragraph —
to —
Delete the paragraph (it is nonsensically circular) —
Add the paragraph (as second-to-the-last paragraph in this subsection) —
Interesting how the phrase "there is an ... number of ..." seemed perfectly correct to me (and presumably many mathematicians as it survived here a month) until it was just changed. Google suggests this choice is used about a hundred times less than "there are a ... number of ...", which makes it rather eccentric to argue for the former. Doesn't seem any reason why the grammatical rule should be different from "there is a herd of cattle in the field", where the common choice is the opposite one, but common usuage wins in what is not really a technical use of language. Elroch 13:01, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I added the program to find primes im not good at explinaing so if nyone else can? or if you want to contact me im here Wolfmankurd 21:20, 29 April 2006 (UTC) also, do I need to write some sort of release copywrtie thing like for images.
Before everyone starts spending too much time writing programs in their favourite language, it may be a good idea to discuss what we need on the page... Personaly, I am not even sure if we need the explicit program to be part of the article; it is rather trivial and is well summarised in less than 2 lines of text in the section "How this works". In addition, the article is already quite long and dense. However, if the consensus is that this program is worth keeping, I'd suggest to follow Donald Knuth's practice (in The Art of Computer Programming) and describe it as an algorithm rather than as a specific implemtntation (and no, I am not suggesting to write it in assembly language...). Schutz 12:03, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
Please stop adding programs to the page. We are already up to 3 versions of the same program; do we really want this page to look like List of hello world programs ? I am waiting a little bit more since there has been only one comment above (thanks, Gandalf61 !), but if noone else comments, I will remove all the programs soon. Schutz 06:35, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
OK, so pseudocode for the sieve of Atkin is not that difficult after all. However, the current version in the article got it all wrong. Traversing the list of candidates and computing the number of solutions for each of them separately brings the running time back to , just like trial division, hence it is much slower than the sieve of Eratosthenes. It has to be done differently, I may try to fix it later. -- EJ 19:26, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Just wondering: how can there be an even digit in any truncatable prime?
For what it's worth the quote from (Gowers 2002) is wrong, mathematically. It may be a correct quote, but it's wrong. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:38, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
As I open the edit window I just see '<references/>' inside.