Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An Interesting Pattern in the Prime Numbers: Parallax Compression

novaspivack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 195 posts

Re: An Interesting Pattern in the Prime Numbers: Parallax Compression

#31

Post by md224 »

Awesome! It's the math enthusiast's dream to come up with something new and exciting outside of academia. Recently I discovered what I thought was an interesting chaotic map, but after posting a question about it to Math StackExchange[1] and emailing one or two professors (no response, which is understandable), my obsession waned and I gave up on trying to figure out if it had any significance. Maybe I should keep trying!

[1] https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2654984/identifying...

Re: An Interesting Pattern in the Prime Numbers: Parallax Compression

#32

Post by pubby »

WaxProlix wrote: post #20

> on January 18, 2018, I found a numerical sequence that generated the exact same pattern as Shaun’s pattern Does this mean that we have a sort of bloom filter-esque test for primality? (ie, it will give you a guaranteed no in O(1) but you'll have to crunch numbers to get the yes?) If so, are there implications for things that want to know "is it prime?" quickly? Crpytography comes to mind, for instance...

>Does this mean that we have a sort of bloom filter-esque test for primality?

This catches most non-primes ;)

bool maybe_prime(x) { return x % 2 && x % 3 && x % 5 && x % 7; }

Re: An Interesting Pattern in the Prime Numbers: Parallax Compression

#33

Post by _rpd »

PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #17

Is there are particular reasoning or meaning to each dot being 6 numbers? Is there any significant changes if you pick other numbers per dot, following the same pattern? Based on the linked explanation here: https://beta.observablehq.com/@montyxcantsin/unwinding-the-u...

The claim is that it is the same pattern independent of the number of integers per dot.

Re: An Interesting Pattern in the Prime Numbers: Parallax Compression

#34

Post by ssewell »

toblender wrote: post #23

If this can really map prime numbers to a least a general region, would we be able to break Diffie-hellman key exchange more quickly? If so this could be a huge blow to security. But I must say this is amazing that they were able to visualize prime numbers in this way. These guys are geniuses.

I was initially thinking the same, but I don't think that's the case. This will help you find a small range of six potential primes (pick any element on the left edge of the triangle). But you're still required to calculate the factorizations on those six numbers to determine which of them are indeed prime.

Re: An Interesting Pattern in the Prime Numbers: Parallax Compression

#35

Post by std_throwaway »

pubby wrote: post #32
WaxProlix wrote: post #20

> on January 18, 2018, I found a numerical sequence that generated the exact same pattern as Shaun’s pattern Does this mean that we have a sort of bloom filter-esque test for primality? (ie, it will give you a guaranteed no in O(1) but you'll have to crunch numbers to get the yes?) If so, are there implications for things that want to know "is it prime?" quickly? Crpytography comes to mind, for instance...

>Does this mean that we have a sort of bloom filter-esque test for primality? This catches most non-primes ;) bool maybe_prime(x) { return x % 2 && x % 3 && x % 5 && x % 7; }

This is both, correct, and useless.

Re: An Interesting Pattern in the Prime Numbers: Parallax Compression

#36

Post by ben509 »

asynchrony wrote: post #25
phyzome wrote: post #14

My gut sense is that this has something to do with visualizing the sieve of Eratosthenes, and nothing more than that. But I'd be happy to hear otherwise.

Other than the sieve of Eratosthenes being a way to compute a finite list of primes I don't see the relationship here. Could you elaborate?

I think the relationship is that the sieve has a natural shape since it's based on ruling out multiples.

Re: An Interesting Pattern in the Prime Numbers: Parallax Compression

#39

Post by gruez »

WaxProlix wrote: post #20

> on January 18, 2018, I found a numerical sequence that generated the exact same pattern as Shaun’s pattern Does this mean that we have a sort of bloom filter-esque test for primality? (ie, it will give you a guaranteed no in O(1) but you'll have to crunch numbers to get the yes?) If so, are there implications for things that want to know "is it prime?" quickly? Crpytography comes to mind, for instance...

way ahead of you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primality_test#Probabilistic_t...

Re: An Interesting Pattern in the Prime Numbers: Parallax Compression

#40

Post by comboy »

std_throwaway wrote: post #35
pubby wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Does this mean that we have a sort of bloom filter-esque test for primality? This catches most non-primes ;) bool maybe_prime(x) { return x % 2 && x % 3 && x % 5 && x % 7; }

This is both, correct, and useless.

Corpos would love it.
Post reply on HN