PRIME NUMBERS

If you get lost as to the article in question for audio, look here. In Our Time

For one's listening pleasure. It's really very good. Do you have a Pure love for Math?

Have you figured Riemann's Hypothesis out yet?It's worth a Million.

[ 19 January 2006: Message edited by: forum observer ]

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a team of researchers in Missouri successfully calculated the highest prime number - it has 9.1 million digits.

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I wince everytime I see that - it's the highest known prime, not the highest prime.

[ 14 January 2006: Message edited by: abnormal ]

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
I have a truly marvellous proof of the Riemann Hypothesis which this thread is too small to contain.

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Originally posted by Brian White:
Whats the big deal about prime numbers?

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This:

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Because of their importance in encryption algorithms such as RSA encryption, prime numbers can be important commercial commodities.

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If one did not have a love for computer information processing that goes on around us, I think it would have little value.

Let's say You encounter a complex emotive situation that has been most troubling to your mates and you.

You look for a underlying ways to resolve this, mathematically given certain parameters you are all encountering, to have defined a most approriate response to this, that happens, becuase of this?

But if you took these lessons to heart, and moved them within the society in which we live as simple people, how could certain actions effect let's say a "negotiating process" or a economist's view on the dynamics taking place in trade deficits and such?

While our views are govern by the socialbility of our encounters and such, then it would not be so strange to consider that the engineering chemically, mechanically, or electrically would define aspects of such manufacturing processes, while we deal with mental and social issues because of that problem above.

Without the math, science might not have progressed along side of the physics? Or the physics the math?

You might have heard of the fairy tales of Alice and Mirror World. Sometimes such simple stories have a more profound effect, when held to the lessons that we will learn about the strange math?

In regards to art, sometimes mathematicians even though they seem to be very logical as their math dictates, some of them might have problems seeing what they are doing or might employ an artist to help create the visualization of the math being developed.

A case in point might be Penrose with Escher and the tessellations.

For somemore listening enjoyment.

[ 16 January 2006: Message edited by: forum observer ]

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Originally posted by Brian White:
Then there was the physicist who dropped some leaves from his hand to figure out quickly the
power of one of the first testing nuclear explosions. The shock wave from it ment they didnt go straight down. And he was really close to the result from the instruments.

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That was Enrico Fermi, with some bits of paper. He's famous in physics for that kind of order-of-magnitude math. For this reason, such problems where the question does not include all the information needed to arrive at the answer, and for which valid, if necessarily imprecise, assumptions need to be made, are called "Fermi Questions."

A classic example is the one where you guess how many piano tuners there are in a fairly large city. Almost any valid assumption set (so many households, so many pianos in a certain percentage of households, and so on) leads to approximately 50-100 tuners, and the phone book nearly always hits the right order of magnitude.

For the math geeks, this describes the Riemann Zeta Function and this describes the Riemann Hypothesis and various attempts to prove it.

[ 16 January 2006: Message edited by: DrConway ]

oops I think I was busy tryng to stave off american companies from taking over Canadians resources. Wonder why the federal government didn't intercede, on behalf of Canadians, while they now turn our heads to the wheat board, an dinstigate fears. PC's and Liberals are captialists in disguise.

oh no! for you Geek types, Dr. Conway, this is it

[ 16 January 2006: Message edited by: forum observer ]

If you are not tired of hearing music, then listen to this.

And if you like "art in math" check this out.

[ 17 January 2006: Message edited by: forum observer ]

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
Hey M. Spector, if you need a really big thread, I can make disparaging remarks about Cuba!

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Originally posted by Brian White:
That little trick got by 4 million people (including me) in BC and the people of pei last year without anybody destroying the whole 60% supermajority nonsence in that straight mathematical way.

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I tried my link from the office as well as my home machine - works fine although it does take a couple of minutes after it says it's done to finish (and that's over the pipes we have in the office, no wimpy DSL lines).

I'll try again later.

I think what is significant that if you go back in history and look a what Gauss and Riemann were doing, how they changed the way we see, I would think you would try and hold this in context of that information.

Of course speculation on my part, and just one more view to the parlour trick? Non!

Now when you think of Pascal and the Fibonacci numbers emerge, you have to wonder, how this framework, would ever allowed us to see in nature, the representation these numbers have for us.

Do you understand this? That's the interesting thing about how mathematics emerges. Pascal framework and probability statistics? Why these particluar numbers?

So you need a framework in which to hold this Hypothesis, and if held in context would you have found valuation in how you see Gaussian coordinates? UV interpretation would have varied and the primes, "this length" and valuation of that line, can indeed vary too. That is part of the perception shared, that Gauss and Riemann were instrumental in.

Would you agree?

Sorry for going on so long. It really is interesting to me, and I look at these underlying factors what ever the circumstance in society or science. Problems within our everyday lives.

That's the pure thought I am after, yet I would fail miserably in all the countless math structures used. So I study.

[ 18 January 2006: Message edited by: forum observer ]

However, you can find links on the site above (click on papers) to both the proof (which I'll be the first to admit is beyond me, at least this far out of grad school/post doc work). However, there is an extremely elegant apology for the proof of the Riemann hypothesis on the site as well. That's well worth reading.

Is he right? Who knows. But it is at least possible that the solution to one of the most important mathematical problems out there won't be read because nobocy likes the author.

[ 18 January 2006: Message edited by: abnormal ]

APOLOGY FOR THE PROOF OF THE RIEMANN HYPOTHESIS by Louis de Branges

The resulting confusion hinders an understanding of the meaning of the Riemann hypothesis. Although the Riemann hypothesis gives information about prime numbers, the significance of the conjecture lies in the application of properties of numbers to the symmetries of objects in space.

[ 18 January 2006: Message edited by: forum observer ]