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Images Created from Prime Numbers

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Re: Images Created from Prime Numbers

#41

Post by ConcernedCoder »

ShorsHammer wrote: post #14
extr wrote: post #9

Wow. I feel like the fact that you can encoding arbitrary information in long numbers is such a far reaching concept in math/computer science, it's really satisfying to see it demonstrated in such an intuitive way.

The entire Library of Babel is encoded in Pi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel

So cool, you can find anything you search for: https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?concernedcoder0001 about 1/2 way down the page you can find: "concerned coder is a programmer living in the sourthern usa, playing a game called eve online while reading hacker news on a sunday night in january"

Re: Images Created from Prime Numbers

#42

Post by unlinked_dll »

snowwrestler wrote: post #18

There’s a great scene in the end of the book “Contact” by Carl Sagan where the main character uses super powerful computers to find a raster image of a circle hidden deep in the digits of pi. This is supposed to be a moment of deep spiritual significance. But in fact, it’s basically an expected outcome given what we think we know about pi. At first glance these images were startling to me; that such recognizable imag…

There's a corollary here about the very human nature of seeking to find order in chaos. I'm not sure how to voice it exactly but it cuts to the philosophy of mathematics, especially probability and statistics.

We are beings that seek to attach order and patterns to randomness and noise even when there might be none. And when it is a pattern or recognizable slice of information within something than contains very few, if any of those slices we are astounded and ponder the greater nature of whatever we observe.

Re: Images Created from Prime Numbers

#43

Post by chairmanwow1 »

oefrha wrote: post #37
war1025 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neat. Thanks for tying it in to something real. Makes sense now that you phrase it that way. Not something I've ever looked into much.

Actually I replied without thinking too much, sorry... Your question is (probably a fair bit) stronger than the one I related to. Edited.

Big side note, but what you just exhibited is one of my favorite things about this community: admitting being wrong.

It wasn’t really until the workplace where I encountered level-headed people that would just shrug their shoulders and say “You are right. I was wrong” and then move on.

It’s so simple, but is amazingly powerful.

Re: Images Created from Prime Numbers

#44

Post by JKCalhoun »

egypturnash wrote: post #33

Mostly unrelated but this made me check to see if the Prime Number Shitting Bear is still online. It is! https://alpha61.com/primenumbershittingbear/

The classic prime joke (saw it originally in Sci Am back in the ... 70's? 80's?). Found an approximation when I googled it:

A mathematician, physicist, and engineer are taking a math test. One question asks "Are all odd numbers prime?"

The mathematician thinks, "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is not prime -- nope, not all odd numbers are prime."

The physicist thinks, "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 ... experimental error, 11 is prime, 13 is prime, yes, they're all prime."

The engineer thinks, "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime, 11 is prime, ..."

Re: Images Created from Prime Numbers

#45

Post by tanelpoder »

mc3 wrote: post #39
kvakil wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition, even if a normal number was used, it's far simpler to describe the data by just using a single number alone. For example, a binary encoding of the data (perhaps using a prefix-free code). Using a normal number and two "positions" is just more complicated.

Nonetheless, it's freaky that our deepest secrets are encoded into pi. If pi is normal.

Also, there will be multiple copies of data, some uncompressed, some compressed in different formats like gzip, lzo, etc.

Re: Images Created from Prime Numbers

#46

Post by thedufer »

krackers wrote: post #6
kijin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the link: > approximately one in every 6200 2688-digit numbers is prime. So if you're lucky, you only need to brute force the last 4 digits! Maybe 5 if you're unlucky. In either case, that's a lot less work than I imagined. And of course you can skip all the even numbers.

How did you get 4 digits? Wouldn't that mean 1 in every 2^4 = 16 is prime? For 1 in every 6200 shouldn't it be 12 digits?

I think the confusion here is that the first image is generated by rendering a prime in binary. The rest appear to be decimal, though, which leads to the result of 4 digits.

Re: Images Created from Prime Numbers

#50

Post by Dylan16807 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #18

There’s a great scene in the end of the book “Contact” by Carl Sagan where the main character uses super powerful computers to find a raster image of a circle hidden deep in the digits of pi. This is supposed to be a moment of deep spiritual significance. But in fact, it’s basically an expected outcome given what we think we know about pi. At first glance these images were startling to me; that such recognizable imag…

> it’s basically an expected outcome given what we think we know about pi.

There is a massive gulf between searching deep into random digits to find something, down to completely unimaginable depths, entire universe-fulls of digits discarded...

and having it be right there, near the surface, in one of the most common numbers that exists. The book talks about the latter.

What this page is about is a third option. It's not searching through primes or other math-derived numbers. It's constructing a number that already has a pattern, which is trivial, and then it's searching nearby numbers until it hits a prime.

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