On Wed, 03 Oct 2018 09:43:07 -0700, Musatov wrote: > On Wednesday, October 3, 2018 at 11:12:43 AM UTC-5, Michael Torrie > wrote: >> On 10/03/2018 09:26 AM, Musatov wrote: >> > I don't even know where to begin! (I'm reading the Dummies book) >> >> If you have no experience in computer programming, it's going to be a >> steep learning curve. >> >> But your first step is to learn Python and how to write programs in it. >> That book and others will help with that. You'll have to write lots of >> simple programs unrelated to primes along the way that help you >> understand programming concepts. >> >> If you already have experience in other languages, the task will be >> easier. >> >> Computer programming is quite natural to some (small children seem to >> get it much easier than us adults), but I've seen others struggle to >> grasp the abstract concepts for years. >> >> Once you've grasped basic Python programming, you can return top the >> original problem at hand. Start by identifying the process or >> algorithm that would find these primes. In other words, how would you >> do it on pen and paper? Computer programs are not magic. They are >> only expressions of human thinking. Often some very smart >> mathematicians have come up with powerful algorithms (a step-by-step >> process) to do these things, >> and your job as a programmer is to turn this mathematical process into >> a computer program using things like loops and Boolean logic. How would >> you find these primes using your pen, paper, and calculator? > > Literally, how I found them was taking a list of primes and checking if > the calculations with the lesser primes resulted in numbers also further > along on the list. > > Another way I guess would be to do the calculations then check if the > number is prime.
That is exactly how you do it with in a program. create a loop & check to see if the target number can be divided by each possible divisor in turn . for large numbers this will take a large number of tests (hey that is why you have the computer do them, it is faster than you & does not get bored ;-) ) there are numerous tricks for speeding up this process once you have the basic working. start by testing small numbers & then use your real data once you have something that works as a starter a simple loop in python could be as follows for x in xrange(10): print x once you have an outline of a program post it back here if things dont work as expected -- A narcissist is someone better looking than you are. -- Gore Vidal -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list