At 10:54 PM 6/21/99 +0100, Gordon Spence wrote:
>>Yup. And don't forget that the larger the exponent, the fewer the
>>possible factors in a given range (e.g., from 0 to 2^40 or 0 to 2^63).
>>
>
>Ok, I'll ask the stupid question, I stopped maths at the year before
>university, WHY is this the case?
Because a factor of Mp must be of the form 2*k*p+1 (actually only half of those
are possible), and as p increases the number of potential factors of that form
<= X decreases.
+----------------------------------------------+
| Jud "program first and think later" McCranie |
+----------------------------------------------+
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