> > It seems I've been DOUBLE CHECKING literally _all year_. How can I > > get out of that 'useful' task and back into the job of high stakes > > factoring? > > They also serve who only stand and double-check :-) Jason
I would like to add, that as a mathematician, I value the double checks as much as the new Mersenne finds. We can not say if the largest record is the 44th Mersenne until the double checks are complete. Single checks are not enough because of the 2% (or so) error rate of first checks. Second checks are much more accurate because it is not the prime/composite final answers that are compared, but a residue from the calculation which are **very** unlikely to match after an error. (And if they do not match you have the valuable triple check which helps check the error rate of the first check...) There out to be a double/triple checkers hall of fame for the those who checked the most (maybe there is?) Chris Caldwell The Prime Pages Univ. of TN at Martin _______________________________________________ Prime mailing list [email protected] http://hogranch.com/mailman/listinfo/prime
