On Tue, Oct 19, 1999 at 01:55:32AM +0300, Jukka Tapani Santala wrote:
>you can compare this to something like the value of Pi, relation of the
>radius to the circumference, which human mind tries to instantly
>rationalize as a "real" number, demonstrated clearly by the actual attempt
>to _legalize_ Pi as 3. In fact, ask anyone what Pi is, and majority of
>them will instantly reply to you "3.14".
I'd say 3.1415926535897932, just to confuse people :-) (Yes, I do remember
those decimals. Why? For fun.)
A friend of mine, being really tired at a LAN-party, decided we should get
away with our 10-system, and start using a phi-system instead. Sounds good
in theory, but then you suddenly can't get to know exactly how many fingers
you've got either?
>The square of two is another good
>example of how "irrational" and counter-intuitive mathemathics really is.
You made a slight typo there -- you did mean the square _root_ of two, did
you?
>To really claim that primes are either "random" or "non-random"
>in nature would give you a ranom chance of being right ;)
But then, define random! If I toss a (`fair') coin, I'd say that it's
random. However, a very quick viewer (or a computer) might see the moment
before the coin hits the ground (and stays there), what it will turn up
as. In other words, then the randomness is _not present_ at that time.
Now, if you go backwards, you can probably calculate (if you're VERY
quick -- remember this is all theoretical) this earlier on, perhaps all
the way back to when the coin leaves your hand. Who knows, perhaps even
further? :-)
/* Steinar */
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