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Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them

#51

Post by bongodongobob »

bhasi wrote: post #48
susam wrote: post #13

As soon as I read the title of this post, the anecdote about the Grothendieck prime came to mind. Sure enough, the article kicks off with that very story! The article also links to https://www.ams.org/notices/200410/fea-grothendieck-part2.pd... which has an account of this anecdote. But the article does not reproduce the anecdote as stated in the linked document. So allow me to share it here as I've always found it q…

But it's not prime - what am I missing? Why is this anecdote significant?

Yeah I don't get it either.

Re: Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them

#52

Post by monadINtop »

bhasi wrote: post #48
susam wrote: post #13

As soon as I read the title of this post, the anecdote about the Grothendieck prime came to mind. Sure enough, the article kicks off with that very story! The article also links to https://www.ams.org/notices/200410/fea-grothendieck-part2.pd... which has an account of this anecdote. But the article does not reproduce the anecdote as stated in the linked document. So allow me to share it here as I've always found it q…

But it's not prime - what am I missing? Why is this anecdote significant?

[dead]

Re: Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them

#53

Post by bongodongobob »

dchichkov wrote: post #29

ChatGPT o1: https://chatgpt.com/share/678feedb-0b2c-8001-bd77-4e574502e4... > Thought about large prime check for 3m 52s: "Despite its interesting pattern of digits, 12,345,678,910,987,654,321 is definitely not prime. It is a large composite number with no small prime factors." Feels like this Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS) would be a good candidate for a hallucination benchmark...

Can we stop with the "haha llms can't do math" nonsense? You'll one shot it every time if you tell it to use Python. You're holding it wrong.

Re: Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them

#54

Post by eigenket »

bhasi wrote: post #48
susam wrote: post #13

As soon as I read the title of this post, the anecdote about the Grothendieck prime came to mind. Sure enough, the article kicks off with that very story! The article also links to https://www.ams.org/notices/200410/fea-grothendieck-part2.pd... which has an account of this anecdote. But the article does not reproduce the anecdote as stated in the linked document. So allow me to share it here as I've always found it q…

But it's not prime - what am I missing? Why is this anecdote significant?

The point is that Grothendieck, easily one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, who regularly proved deep and fundamental facts about prime numbers, cared so little about particular numbers that he accidentally gave an easy to see non-prime as an example of a prime.

He was used to working on completely different levels of abstraction, so when faced with concrete numbers he could easily make a mistake that a school-child (or hacker news commenter) could spot.

Re: Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them

#55

Post by DerekL »

xigency wrote: post #17

Doesn't take very much searching to find this pretty nifty palindrome prime: 3,212,123 (the 333rd palindrome prime) Interestingly, there are no four digit palindrome primes because they would be divisible by 11. This is obvious in retrospect but I found this fact by giving NotebookLM a big list of palindrome primes (just to see what it could possibly say about it over a podcast). For the curious, here's a small set o…

> Interestingly, there are no four digit palindrome primes because they would be divisible by 11.

In fact, this holds for any even number of digits.

Re: Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them

#57

Post by hatthew »

> Since prime numbers are very useful in secure communication, such easy-to-remember large prime numbers can be of great advantage in cryptography

What's the use of notable prime numbers in cryptography? My understanding is that a lot of cryptography relies on secret prime numbers, so choosing a notable/memorable prime number is like choosing 1234 as your PIN. Are there places that need a prime that's arbitrary, large, and public?

Re: Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them

#59

Post by Retric »

DerekL wrote: post #56
Retric wrote: post #21

> Sloane calls them “memorable” primes Excluding 11 seems arbitrary here.

No, that doesn't fit the pattern. The number in the middle can't be repeated.

That’s how it’s excluded, not why we should care about the pattern being exactly that formula.

Re: Prime numbers so memorable that people hunt for them

#60

Post by expensive_news »

zellyn wrote: post #35
susam wrote: post #13

As soon as I read the title of this post, the anecdote about the Grothendieck prime came to mind. Sure enough, the article kicks off with that very story! The article also links to https://www.ams.org/notices/200410/fea-grothendieck-part2.pd... which has an account of this anecdote. But the article does not reproduce the anecdote as stated in the linked document. So allow me to share it here as I've always found it q…

One of my pet hobbies is trying to figure out the least prime prime number and most prime composite numbers under 100. My votes are 61 or 89 for least prime-seeming primes and 87 and --yep-- 57 for more prime-seeming composites.

I really enjoy this “proof” that the most prime-seeming composite is 91

https://youtu.be/S75VTAGKQpk

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