Milton Brown wrote:
>
> This article seems to have its "facts"
> all wrong. Its use of mersenne primes
> makes no sense. The author should print
> a revised article that is correct and reviewed.
While I think that's a tad too much criticism directed at a
non-technical, local newspaper, and I know newspapers very rarely print
any more than a retraction of 3 or 4 lines in an inside corner
somewhere, I do have to dispute a few things said in that article:
"Nor has anybody developed an easy way to tell whether a number is
prime:
You’ve got to try dividing it by every possible factor, which is a
time-consuming pain in the patoot."
I think it's marginally possible to prove M127 in that fashion, but not
M521 or any higher Mersenne.
"It’s named after a 17th century French monk, Marin Mersenne, who noted
that most numbers of the form (2N – 1) are prime when N is a prime."
No mention is made of the fact that Mersenne made several incorrect
guesses, and he certainly did not state that most such numbers are prime
(although all but one of the first eight are).
[M#38 is] the biggest prime number known to humanity,
and it would be very cool if the new biggest prime
known to humanity would pop up in my computer.
Plus, it would make me eligible for up to $250,000
in prizes!
Is he even doing decamegatests?
So I don’t mind that my computer does stuff when
I’m not there, or every now and then calls
http://www.mersenne.org and lets them know how
I’m doing.
Wrong domain, and the program does not automatically call in when
properly configured.
Folks, rather than making blanket statements about the quality of an
article written by someone who admits to having a limited understanding
of science, would it not be better to point out the specific errors to
the author of the article?
That is what we should be discussing on this list, not simply saying
that the article is bad, IMHO.
Nathan
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