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/sci/ - Science & Math

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8235964 No.8235964[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

fucking prime numbers man what do they mean?

>> No.8235966

>>8235964
they're numbers without factors

>> No.8235970
File: 152 KB, 1280x1261, HAHA LoOOl OmGGg RoFL HOLyShiT XDD.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8235970

>>8235966
LOL
consider suicide

>> No.8235987

>>8235964
No one knows.

They represent a structure in the integers that is hard to understand.

When we expand upon our numbers, we can get different looks at the primes or parts of the primes, like gaussian primes.

We are slowly understanding more and more.

Your question is analogous to asking what do even numbers mean.

Well...it depends on the context. They have a clear formal definition. In real life situations, they mean something like if there are an even number of something they can be shared between two people, for example. I doubt they have any particular meaning in physics, etc...

For primes, math based around them do have meanings in physics. This deeper meaning is probably what you are asking and it is a hard thing to answer due to how layered practical math is on top of prime numbers.

However, it is very likely the structure provided by prime numbers is necessary for most important properties in math and thus any resulting use of math in physics and thus any useful description of the world.

>> No.8235991

>>8235964
They are the only "real" numbers

>> No.8235992

>>8235964
>>8235987

I meant to point out, a mathematical result useful in physics is something like use of p-adic numbers in physics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-adic_quantum_mechanics

Without primes, this would not make sense.

>> No.8235998

>>8235964
Prime numbers are both predictable and unpredictable. Predictable in that, given a number, one can classify the number as prime or not. Unpredictable in that it's difficult to find the next prime number without brute force checking.

Any number sequence has a set of defined features that are strictly followed. For example 2, 4, 6, 8 have the features that they are even. 3, 5, 7, are odd.
The feature of a prime number is that it cannot be divisible by any number less that it. This might seem easy at first but to clearly define this feature requires that the list of features be increasing each time a new prime number is found. And so this list of features is always increasing and not constant.

>> No.8236007

>>8235987
numbers are the classes of all classes that are similar to each other, it's not a mystery.

>> No.8236018

>>8236007
Numbers are usually viewed that way, but primeness is not unique to numbers.

The definition of prime in any Ring is well known. But what primeness means, assuming the OP didn't want just the formal definition, is unknown. It depends on the context, and OP probably meant in terms of life, the universe, and everything.

How the universe seeming to have a primeness property among things, based on axioms we humans create from observations, affects everything else is complicated.

The best way to view is through our best way of describing the universe--physics; and physics definitely uses prime numbers, right?

So the question becomes how does the primeness property affect our physics?

Well that's hard, but it is clear without the primeness property, our current physics would not make sense.

>> No.8236020

>>8236018
>>8236007

See http://www.ams.org/journals/tran/1946-060-00/S0002-9947-1946-0019595-7/S0002-9947-1946-0019595-7.pdf

This is a system of elements with operations like numbers but there are only a finite number of primes.

Say "a" is one of those elements and we were walking a speed of "a"

We cannot understand what that means because it does not make sense based on what we can observe and think.

But a universe guided by this Ring instead of numbers would be very different.

>> No.8236029

prime numbers make no sense to me because when it seems like there is a pattern or understanding there is no way to predict all primes without calculating them in a monolithic fashion.

>> No.8236058

>>8236020
crackpot detected

>> No.8236062

>>8235964

Prime numbers are in canonical bijection with the points of Spec(Z), the terminal object in the category of schemes.

>> No.8236068
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8236068

>>8236062

>> No.8236069

>>8236020
How can there be a finite number of primes if there are infinite numbers?

>> No.8236070

>>8236069

how can primes be real if our eyes aren't real

>> No.8236085

That only one and the number are divisible by them.

>> No.8236088

>>8236069
Because there's an infinite amount of possibilities for those numbers to be divisible by other numbers.

>> No.8236153

Do you think one day we will have a function to tell us the nth prime?

If there is infinite primes and infinite natural numbers, there must(?) be some kind of structure to 'generate' them in mathematical nature

or am i completely wrong lol

>> No.8236169

>>8236153
>a function to tell us the nth prime

f(n)=the nth prime number

where's my fields medal?

>> No.8236176

>>8236169
its in my pocket
gonna sell it boy

>> No.8236179

>>8236169
I think >>8236153 meant an explicit way to generate them in polynomial time.

>> No.8236189

>>8235992
wew that's very interesting.
In fact I've never been interested so much in math, probably because I've never been exposed to such high-level and "experimental" math.

>> No.8236224
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8236224

>>8236153

bool isPrime(int n){
int x = 2;
while (n % x != 0)
x++;
if (x < n)
return false;
else
return true;
}

>> No.8236227

>>8236224
dat efficiency man

>> No.8236234

>>8236224
shitty
bool isPrime(int n){
. for (int d = 2; d *d <= n; d++){
. . if (n%d == 0) return true;
. }
. return false;
}

>> No.8236244

>>8236224
Not the guy who posted >>8236153. Just putting in my two cents. That only checks if it's prime. It doesn't generate a sequence of prime numbers. And as >>8236227 said, this is terribly inefficient. Some sort of memoization would probably help that. But there has to be some way to do it more quickly.

>> No.8236271

>>8236244
> doesn't create a list of primes


while(n < 100000000000000000000000){
if (isPrime(n) == 1)
cout << "Human, I found another prime! It's " << n << endl;
n++;
}

>> No.8236275

>>8236244
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generating_primes
according to wikipedia, there are ways to generate primes with sublinear time complexities

>> No.8236300

>>8236271
that's retarded
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Eratosthenes

>> No.8236309

>>8236300
God you're right, can't believe I missed that.

while(n < 99999999999999999999999999){
if (isPrime(n) == 1)
cout << "Human, I found another prime! It's " << n << endl;
n++;
}

Fixed.

>> No.8236323

there are a finite number of prime numbers

prove me wrong

[i know they aren't i just want to see how you prove they're infinite]

>> No.8236341
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8236341

fckn Prime Numbers,
how do they werk?!

>> No.8236351

>>8236323
>babby's first proof

Okay, I'll humour you. Assuming you are working over the ring of integers, multiply all your finitely many prime numbers together and add one. No prime can multiply into it. Contradiction.

>> No.8236412
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8236412

>>8236234
You square d on every iteration

>> No.8236418

>>8236323

http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2008-02-26

>> No.8236424

>>8236412
that picture made me laugh out loud like a retard.
my neighbours must think I'm an idiot

>> No.8236432

>>8235970
Take your pedophile cartoons back to >>>/a/.

Fucking degenerate.