On 11 Apr 2006, at 19:34, Charles Yeomans wrote:
That page is a little misleading; it's basically correct, but could be written more clearly. The short answer is this -- 1 is not a prime because its exclusion makes the theory cleaner. Longer answers require precise statements concerning things like primality and unique factorization and thus are too much work for most people.
From what I've read, I'm not doubting that the modern way of thinking about primes is to exclude 1, but I feel that explanations still don't change the fact that 1 is divisible by 1 and itself (1), hence by definition it is *logically* a prime number.
Chicken or the egg anybody? :) All the best, Mark. _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives of this list here: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
