Posts tagged prime numbers
A Different Pi for Pi Day
Nope, not this kind of pi(e). Image: flickr/djwtwo.
The symbol π is overloaded in math: depending on context and capitalization, π could be the constant we all know and love (or hate), a projection, a product, or a function. There’s plenty of stuff to read about the circle constant, so today I’m writing about one of those other π& [...]
This Week in Number Theory
A visualization of the twin primes using an Ulam spiral. Created by Silveira Neto and shared under a Creative Commons-attribution-share alike license.
The week of May 12 was pretty big for number theory. I wrote about some of the blog coverage of the two major results.
By now you’ve probably heard the announcements of two big results in numbe [...]
Goldbach Variations
In mid-May, Harald Helfgott of the École Normale Supériure in Paris published a proof of the ternary Goldbach conjecture, a longstanding question in number theory.
Harald Helfgott, who finished the proof of the ternary Goldbach conjecture. Image: Harald Helfgott.
Of course, making substantial progress on a problem that some of the most brilli [...]
91 Is April Fooling You
7 × 13 pieces of beach glass found on the shore of Lake Michigan and arranged on my coffee table.
On April Fools’ Day, I wrote about 91, a non-prime that looks prime and has fooled me more than once.
You can generate your own fake primes, or Lamb pseudoprimes, by finding any two or more prime numbers other than 2, 3, 5, and 11 and multi [...]
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