Hi,
At 02:44 PM 5/18/2001 +0100, Steve wrote:
> > >Another point - we're coming up to the second anniversary of the
> > >discovery of M38(?) - I think we're overdue to find another one!
> >
> > It would be nice to find another soon. But I don't think we're overdue.
The Sept 30, 1999 status.htm page showed 3.12 expected new Mersenne primes
to be found below 20.4M. The latest status.htm page shows 1.49. So during
that time we found zero primes instead of the expected 1.63 primes. By no
means unusual, but it is unlucky.
Another way to look at it. Roughly speaking supercomputers owned the
region below 1.3M, GIMPS above that. We've roughly tested three "doublings"
1.3M to 2.6M, 2.6M to 5.2M, 5.2M to 10.4M. There are 1.78 an
expected Mersenne primes per doubling. GIMPS should have found 5.34 primes.
Oh well, maybe the 10.4M to 20.8M doubling will be especially rich in new
Mersenne primes :)
Regards,
George
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