Shouldn't theorems be independent of arbitrary decisions regarding what
is or is not a prime number? Otherwise I'll have to believe that
mathematicians are just making up stuff.
On 12/10/11 4:08 PM, George Duncan wrote:
Yes, it does depend on how you define prime BUT speaking as a
*mathematician*
it is good to have definitions for which we get interesting theorems,
like the unique (prime) factorization theorem that says every natural
number has unique prime factors, so 6 has just 2 and 3, NOT 2 and 3 or
2 and 3 and 1. So we don't want 1 as a prime or the theorem doesn't work.
*statistician*
do a Bing or Google search on prime number and see what frequency of
entries define 1 as prime (I didn't find any). So from an empirical
point of view usage says 1 is not prime
*artist*
try Bing of Google images and see how many pretty pictures show 1 as
prime. I didn't see any.
Cheers, Duncan
On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 5:19 PM, Pamela McCorduck <pam...@well.com
<mailto:pam...@well.com>> wrote:
I asked the in-house mathematician about this. When he began,
"Well, it depends on how you define 'prime' . . ." I knew it was
an ambiguous case.
PMcC
On Dec 10, 2011, at 5:12 PM, Marcos wrote:
On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 2:17 AM, Russell Standish
<r.stand...@unsw.edu.au <mailto:r.stand...@unsw.edu.au>> wrote:
Has one ever been prime? Never in my lifetime...
Primes start at 2 in my world. There was mathematician doing
a talk
once, and before he started talking, he checked his microphone:
"Testing...., testing, 2, 3, 5, 7"
That's how I remember.
Mark
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