Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them
scientificamerican.com
Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them
1–10 of 106 posts
Re: Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them
#2The title of the Scientific American article is "These Prime Numbers Are So Memorable That People Hunt for Them", which matches the content much better than the title above.
Re: Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them
#3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belphegor%27s_prime
"666" with 13 0's on either side and 1's on the ends.
Re: Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them
#4Since divisibility by 2 and 5 is such a problem, why not look for memorable numbers in prime base, like base 7 or base 11?
Re: Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them
#5Since divisibility by 2 and 5 is such a problem, why not look for memorable numbers in prime base, like base 7 or base 11?
If we allow non-decimal bases, (2^n)-1 works for a lot of memorable values of n (e.g. 2, 3, 5, 7... and 31, per the article), or some less memorable but very long values of n, like 136279841
They're all technically palindromes in base-2.
Re: Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them
#6Re: Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them
#7https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belphegor%27s_prime "666" with 13 0's on either side and 1's on the ends.
wow, evil pi.
very interesting, thanks for sharing.
Re: Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them
#8https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belphegor%27s_prime "666" with 13 0's on either side and 1's on the ends.
It also works with no zeros, or all sorts of other number of zeros. Dude basically just added zeros until the number got cooler.
Re: Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them
#9Maybe there's a prime number that makes a mildly interesting picture when rendered in base-2 in a 8*8 grid.
Should somebody spend time looking at all the primes that fit in the grid? Absolutely not.
Re: Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them
#10Reminds me the demonstration that all whole numbers are interesting in a way or another. Being memorable in this case is not so much about memory but about having an easy to notice pattern of digits, or a clear trivial algorithm to build them.