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Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

#51
post #47
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very notion of discreteness depends on subjective definitions of "objects". We take concepts of objects for granted because they make interacting with the world tractable, but it's really hard to define them outside of minds.

As far as we know, the universe is made up of discrete units and any other type of math is an abstraction over discrete math.

I thought it was a smooth continuous manifold

Re: Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

#52
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as we know, the universe is made up of discrete units and any other type of math is an abstraction over discrete math.

As far as we know, the universe is a single unity, and any discrete units and any other type of math are human distinctions overlaid upon that unity.

Can you explain what you mean here? I mean yes there’s a universe so it can be see as a unit. There’s also quantum mechanics, telling us we can only distinguish discrete objects at the bottom of the scale. Can you give an example of a non-human distinction, or explain what you mean by that concept?

Re: Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

#54
post #44
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discrete math is the single most "observed property of reality", and nothing else comes even close.

The very notion of discreteness depends on subjective definitions of "objects". We take concepts of objects for granted because they make interacting with the world tractable, but it's really hard to define them outside of minds.

No, discrete math is exactly the same regardless of your definition of "object". It is completely independent of that. Discrete math is important to any theoretical beings that have any concept of "objects" whatsoever. It would be mostly irrelevant to entities that have no such conception, but those entities are not writing math papers.

Re: Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

#55
post #44
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discrete math is the single most "observed property of reality", and nothing else comes even close.

The very notion of discreteness depends on subjective definitions of "objects". We take concepts of objects for granted because they make interacting with the world tractable, but it's really hard to define them outside of minds.

No, the discreetness comes from physical experiments. I do see a problem defining something outside of one’s mind or outside the universe though :)

Re: Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

#56
I hope the twin prime conjecture will become a theorem during the remainder of my lifetime

that's why I already got the double twin prime conjecture ready:

there exists an infinite number of consecutive twin primes. 3 examples: 11,13; 17,19. 101,103;107,109, AND 191,193;197,199... I know of another example near the 800s

there's also the dubious, or trivial, or dunno (gotta generalize this pattern as well) of the first "consecutive" twin prime but they overlap which is 3,5 and 5,7.... which reminds me of how only 2 and 3 are both primes off by one; again, I need to generalize this pattern of "last time ever primes did that"

Re: Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

#57
post #7

I'm a little confused at the significance here. Before I read the definition of the M_a, this seemed crazy, but on actually reading it, M_1 is just the sum-of-divisors function (usually denoted sigma). So, n is prime iff M_1(n)=n+1. That's much simpler than the first equation listed there! Indeed, looking things up, it seems that in general the functions M_a can be written as a linear combination (note: with polynomi…

The M functions are the MacMahon’s partition functions (see the paper [1]). They were not known to relate to the sum of divisors. The M_a function counts partitions in a parts but weighing multiplicities in the partion. [1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.06451

Sorry, but M_1 is simply the sum of divisors, and I don't think that was ever a mystery. Specializing the notation from the paper for M_a, to a=1, and writing pythonic with finite bounds for clarity...

  M_1(n) = sum(
    m
    for m in range(1, n+1)
    for s in range(1, n+1)
    if m*s = n
  )

Re: Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

#59
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as we know, the universe is made up of discrete units and any other type of math is an abstraction over discrete math.

I thought it was a smooth continuous manifold

To what extent are the Planck length and Planck second confirmed smallest discrete units?

Re: Mathematicians hunting prime numbers discover infinite new pattern

#60
Because the article doesn't actually say so (presumably because the author doesn't know the difference between "if" and "if and only if") the statement:

(3n^3 − 13n^2 + 18n − 8)M_1(n) + (12n^2 − 120n + 212)M_2(n) − 960M_3(n) = 0

is equivalent to the statement that n is prime. The result is that there are infinitely many such characterizing equations.

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