9/28/08

So confused!

Okay: it's in the news: a newly disocvered prime number. It's 43,112,609...cool fine. But then it gets tricky....the new prime is also said to be 13 million digit's long. But the number they gave us was 8 digits long. This newly discovered prime is also called a Mersenne prime. This is also where it's fuzzy. I am used to the normal primes...ya know a number only divisible by itself and one.

I am no slouch with math, but theoretical math is beyond me. I need to be able to imagine the numbers and quantities and formulations.

So I read in the fox news article that Mersenne prime means 2P-1, which is to say "two to the power of prime minus one". Okay...huh?

A little bit later: So I talked to my Dad who is an electrical engineer (very savvy with numbers and asked him to explain it to me). So 43,112,609 isn't the new prime. 2 to the power of 43,112,609 - 1 is the 13 million digit new prime number. And it being thirteen million digits long--no one has the time or space to write that number out.

Savvy?

Inside of saying the new prime number is 43,112,609 they ought to have written out the formula...then it would have been more accurate and easier to understand.

Labels: Obsessions

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