• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Pattern to prime numbers?

Qre:us

New member
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
4,890
Let's see if we here in this community can aim to share a future Field's Medal in mathematics, by trying to solve what the pattern is for predicting prime numbers.

Thoughts/ideas? Discuss!
 

Qre:us

New member
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
4,890
^ And, thank you, Mr. Perfectionist Costrin. Now, can we got on with the buziness of solving this puzzle before we are dead?

[it is an imperative part of my grand master plan to take over the world]

So....chop, chop!
 

Mondo

Welcome to Sunnyside
Joined
Mar 1, 2008
Messages
1,992
MBTI Type
EsTP
Enneagram
6w7
Hmmm.... I barely know where to start.

I guess we could work with the fact that all primes will be odd except for 2 somehow.
This is gonna take some time, :D
 

Costrin

rawr
Joined
Nov 1, 2008
Messages
2,320
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
5w4
^ And, thank you, Mr. Perfectionist Costrin. Now, can we got on with the buziness of solving this puzzle before we are dead?

[it is an imperative part of my grand master plan to take over the world]

So....chop, chop!

Before we get to that, I have some questions about my contract. Namely, I didn't sign one, so I am in no way obligated to do this at all.

So, I'll be enjoying a nice refreshing afternoon not working on prime numbers.

Best of luck with your master plan.
 

Qre:us

New member
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
4,890
Changing from base 10 to base 6 has been well-documented as a way to gain some insight, (6x + 1) and (6x -1), but we see obvious skips in the pattern, hence it is still not comprehensive.

........tick, tock!
 

Qre:us

New member
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
4,890
Before we get to that, I have some questions about my contract. Namely, I didn't sign one, so I am in no way obligated to do this at all.

So, I'll be enjoying a nice refreshing afternoon not working on prime numbers.

Best of luck with your master plan.

:steam: Now, listen, and listen well, my minion! Forewarned: Such 'refreshing' afternoons will be in limited supply if you do not engage in this task with me. You will not know when, or why, but, one morning, the sun will set by noon, and you shall hear my words *echo* *echo*.....while darkness mounts.
 

Costrin

rawr
Joined
Nov 1, 2008
Messages
2,320
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
5w4
:steam: Now, listen, and listen well, my minion! Forewarned: Such 'refreshing' afternoons will be in limited supply if you do not engage in this task with me. You will not know when, or why, but, one morning, the sun will set by noon, and you shall hear my words *echo* *echo*.....while darkness mounts.

If it's not too much to ask, could you do that now? That sun thing is rather annoying. Hurts my eyes, burns my skin, etc. I would really appreciate it.
 

Qre:us

New member
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
4,890
Mutiny on the Bounty....I see (and all within 10 posts!).

* must away to re-organize my plan.

In the meantime, others, keep at it. Oh, and Mondo, you have been upgraded to my right-hand-pawn. WithoutAFace, you shall be part of my harem.
 

The_Liquid_Laser

Glowy Goopy Goodness
Joined
Jul 11, 2007
Messages
3,376
MBTI Type
ENTP
Let's see if we here in this community can aim to share a future Field's Medal in mathematics, by trying to solve what the pattern is for predicting prime numbers.

Thoughts/ideas? Discuss!

There are algorithms that have been developed for discoving new primes. I believe the problem is in finding an exhaustive list of primes. There is no known method of finding every one.
 

Qre:us

New member
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
4,890
There are algorithms that have been developed for discoving new primes. I believe the problem is in finding an exhaustive list of primes. There is no known method of finding every one.

The problem is not "in" finding an exhaustive list of primes. That is the initial question itself, just reworded. The problem is that we do not have one formula for finding infinite prime numbers (if we did, that itself, would be the answer re: pattern).
 

ThatsWhatHeSaid

Well-known member
Joined
May 11, 2007
Messages
7,263
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w4
I think I might have found something interesting. I need a little more time, though, and I've only worked up until 200.
 

BlueScreen

Fail 2.0
Joined
Nov 8, 2008
Messages
2,668
MBTI Type
YMCA
I always thought prime numbers were interesting. The question to me is asking us to detect the absence of a large number of things rather than the presence of one, which may be why we seem to not find an answer without testing the things aren't there. But if I walked outside and there were no million things there I would know pretty quickly. I wouldn't have to check for them all. That seems to me what we need to find. The perspective where we see the factors, rather than show the lack of them.

Still the order of primes is decided by the blanks in the multiplication tables. It's like you superimpose a heap of square waves and look for the zeroes. There is a lot of order in number systems, but it is normally due to the base you choose. ie. base 10 you can instantly see 2,3,5 as factors, as 10=2x5 (where you switch to next column), and 10-1=3^2 (where the digit sums step over, ie. 9 18, 27, 36). There's lots of interesting little patterns to find also, like all primes after 3 are 6n+-1 (just because the odd number in between has a factor of 3, and even numbers obviously have a factor of 2). This can be extended up in the same form from memory as you get higher in the number system and more things get excluded ie. xn+-c. None of these things ever seemed to improve the efficiency of finding primes in the end though. Still I'm up for exploring, even if we don't find anything useful in terms of primes, it'll help us get better at maths :).
 

ajblaise

Minister of Propagandhi
Joined
Aug 3, 2008
Messages
7,914
MBTI Type
INTP
This sounds right:

Patterns in Prime Numbers

The different thing about primes is that there is no real pattern to their occurrence. They seem to appear randomly, however, we do know that all but two of them end in either 1, 3, 7, or 9. Other than that though, we have found no distinct pattern. This makes finding primes incredibly hard. If we knew they occurred every 24 number, they would be very easy to find. But, with their random appearances, each number has to be tested individually in order to determine if it is prime or not. Even with computers, this is a very grueling task. Recently, some progress has been made by graphing the prime numbers, but the patterns they form are very difficult to follow, and generating large primes with them would be difficult. Other, smaller patterns can be found in prime numbers, but eventually they terminate.

Some neat prime numbers that have patterns are 12345678901234567891. This is an ascending prime. Another neat pattern in primes is palindromic primes, and these read the same from front to back, such as 111191111, 919191919, and 123494321.
Patterns in Prime Numbers
 

Mondo

Welcome to Sunnyside
Joined
Mar 1, 2008
Messages
1,992
MBTI Type
EsTP
Enneagram
6w7
Mutiny on the Bounty....I see (and all within 10 posts!).

* must away to re-organize my plan.

In the meantime, others, keep at it. Oh, and Mondo, you have been upgraded to my right-hand-pawn. WithoutAFace, you shall be part of my harem.

I'm glad to be of service, :D
 

nozflubber

DoubleplusUngoodNonperson
Joined
Mar 30, 2008
Messages
2,078
MBTI Type
Hype
What if there is no pattern due to the nature of division, the process through which you're puting them through? I require a thorough analysis of the nature of division (philosophically and mathematically) ASAP....


1st question to understanding division: dividng by 0 and by infinite. why is one null and the other zero (in most cases)? actually, how can it be that when we take an infinite series that should essentially be infinite divided by infinite, we can get a whole number?

This is troublesome.... maybe i'll work on redefining division while you guys check out the more heads on way
 

The_Liquid_Laser

Glowy Goopy Goodness
Joined
Jul 11, 2007
Messages
3,376
MBTI Type
ENTP
The problem is not "in" finding an exhaustive list of primes. That is the initial question itself, just reworded. The problem is that we do not have one formula for finding infinite prime numbers (if we did, that itself, would be the answer re: pattern).

Finding an exhaustive list is not exactly the same as finding infinite prime numbers, although the two problems are closely related.
 

Laurie

Was E.laur
Joined
Jan 3, 2009
Messages
6,072
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
7w6
I wrote a javascript to do primes. It would have been nice to have an easy pattern. Of course it wouldn't have been something to write javascript about then.
 
Top