Actually you can't define primeness any way you want. The definition needs
to be negotiated by the community of professionals who are can credibly
agree on the definition.
My definition of primeness is "anything bigger than 3 and painted an
attractive shade of blue". But no one listens to me. Nor should they,
because I'm not a mathematician.
—R
On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 10:13 AM, Grant Holland
<grant.holland...@gmail.com>wrote:
> 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>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>
>>> 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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>>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> George Duncan
> georgeduncanart.com
> (505) 983-6895
> Represented by ViVO Contemporary
> 725 Canyon Road
> Santa Fe, NM 87501
>
> Life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward.
> Soren Kierkegaard
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>
> ============================================================
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> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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>
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