Hi,
At Wed, 26 Apr 2000 22:11:58 -0400
George Woltman explained:
>What I do is just re-issue them as first time tests. The last time I did
>this was
>roughly six months ago. I don't feel very guilty about this as there is
>about
>a 50% chance the first test was no good and these exponents probably take
>about half as much time as the big exponents now issued for first time
>testing.
I was merely curious about the status of some of the exponents that I was
seeing. I would certainly agree that re-issuing these as first-time tests
is the best idea. Those who are doing double-checking are presumably doing
so because they feel that the shorter completion times are a fair swap-off
for the decreased chance of finding a prime. They might, as I previously
stated, have some difficulty with completing first-time tests in a timely
manner.
Those doing first-time tests, OTOH, are willing to complete longer runs for
the increased chance of finding a prime. In addition to the factors that
you mentioned, smaller exponents are marginally more likely to be prime. If
anything, when you re-issue the exponents that experienced hardware errors,
you are doing a favor to those who recieve them.
Nathan
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
_________________________________________________________________
Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
