On 7 Mar 00, at 21:22, Nathan Russell wrote:
> I saw somewhere on the PrimeNet page that factoring time is weighted lower
> in the top producers list in order to encourage an ideal ratio of "about
> 10 factoring assignments for 1 LL test". This implies that 9 out of 10
> factoring assignments do find a factor.
No. We want to balance time to run a LL test against time to run
factoring divided by the probability of finding a factor. So the
implication is that about 9 out of 10 factoring assignments _fail_ to
find a factor.
> I have completed 3 assignments to
> date without finding a factor. Am I just unlucky?
I would say that your chance of _not_ finding a factor in N
assignments should be approximately 0.9^N - for N=3 this evaluates at
0.729. However, random events like finding factors, arrival of buses,
airplane crashes etc. always seem to arrive in bunches. I've had a
P100 solidly crunching its way through factoring assignments for a
good while now - it completes about two a week - once it went about
three months without finding any factors, once it found three in a
fortnight.
Regards
Brian Beesley
_________________________________________________________________
Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
