On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 2:17 AM, Russell Standish r.stand...@unsw.edu.au wrote:
Has one ever been prime? Never in my lifetime...
Primes start at 2 in my world. There was mathematician doing a talk
once, and before he started talking, he checked his microphone:
Testing, testing, 2, 3, 5, 7
I asked the in-house mathematician about this. When he began, Well,
it depends on how you define 'prime' . . . I knew it was an ambiguous
case.
PMcC
On Dec 10, 2011, at 5:12 PM, Marcos wrote:
On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 2:17 AM, Russell Standish r.stand...@unsw.edu.au
wrote:
Has one ever
Yes, it does depend on how you define prime BUT speaking as a
*mathematician*
it is good to have definitions for which we get interesting theorems, like
the unique (prime) factorization theorem that says every natural number has
unique prime factors, so 6 has just 2 and 3, NOT 2 and 3 or 2 and 3
I'm also a big fine of using a single standard definition for apriori
structures in formal logic. The semantics convolution caused by
individual definitions in normal speech is bad enough. I'm sure
some one has come up with a good name for the set of 1 and the primes,
and such terminology should
Shouldn't theorems be independent of arbitrary decisions regarding what
is or is not a prime number? Otherwise I'll have to believe that
mathematicians are just making up stuff.
On 12/10/11 4:08 PM, George Duncan wrote:
Yes, it does depend on how you define prime BUT speaking as a
