On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 7:55 PM, Robert J. Cordingley
rob...@cirrillian.com wrote:
Shouldn't theorems be independent of arbitrary decisions regarding what is
or is not a prime number? Otherwise I'll have to believe that
mathematicians are just making up stuff.
Of course its all made up. What
Abstract mathematicians are just making up stuff however they want. They
are artists whose clay is (in the modern view) formal logic. The
nature of their creation is its own reason for being. Abstract
mathematics is not natural science, nor is it the province of natural
scientists. If one of
I've forgotten the message that spawned the thread, but I'll expose my
incompetence in math to say that I was also thinking that 1 is prime. The
informal definition that I remember says that a number is prime if it is an
integer evenly divisible only by itself and 1. Well, 1 clearly is
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
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
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
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
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
I'm also a big fine of using a single standard definition for apriori
structures in formal logic. The semantics convolution caused by
individual definitions in normal speech is bad enough. I'm sure
some one has come up with a good name for the set of 1 and the primes,
and such terminology should
Shouldn't theorems be independent of arbitrary decisions regarding what
is or is not a prime number? Otherwise I'll have to believe that
mathematicians are just making up stuff.
On 12/10/11 4:08 PM, George Duncan wrote:
Yes, it does depend on how you define prime BUT speaking as a
Has one ever been prime? Never in my lifetime...
On Wed, Dec 07, 2011 at 11:29:24PM -0700, Greg Sonnenfeld wrote:
Apparently it hasn't been a prime since wikipedia started. Though what
is a prime is simply a matter of definition as are most mathematical
constructs. (Though some fit the
From the wikipedia article under the subheading *Primality of one*:
...Derrick Norman Lehmer's list of primes up to 10,006,721,
reprinted as late as 1956,[5] started with 1 as its first prime.[6]
Henri Lebesgue is said to be the last professional mathematician to
call 1 prime.[7]
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_numbers 1 isn't a prime
number any more. Can someone explain (translate) the reason for this
shift in the cosmos?
Where's Henri when you need him? (You have to see the wiki article.)
Robert C
Apparently it hasn't been a prime since wikipedia started. Though what
is a prime is simply a matter of definition as are most mathematical
constructs. (Though some fit the physical world rather well. )
A '''prime number''', or '''prime''' for short, is a [[natural number]]
larger than 1 that
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