George's observation (from Saturday) under "mathematician" pretty much
captures the issue for me. One can define "primeness" any way one wants.
The choice of excluding 1 has the "fun" consequence that George explains
so well. Maybe including "1" has other fun consequences. If so, then
give that definition a name ("prime" is already taken) , and see where
it leads. You can make this stuff up any way you want, folks. Just
follow the consequences. Some of these consequences provide analogies
that physicists can use. Some don't. No matter. We just wanna have fun!
Grant
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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George Duncan
georgeduncanart.com <http://georgeduncanart.com/>
(505) 983-6895
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Life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward.
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