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Re: Re: Finding Primes

by Foggy Bottoms (Monk)
on Aug 14, 2003 at 10:52 UTC ( [id://283822]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re: Finding Primes
in thread Finding Primes

Hi Abigail,

You're quite right but I never actually meant to give a solution to the 200-digit long number, I was only recapping the typical algorithms one can come up with, pretenselessly ;-)...
There must be an option with n! numbers because they grow so quickly - I thought that n!+1 might a prime number but an easy counter-example is n=4 (which'd give n!=24 hence n!+1=25 = 5*5, barely what you can call a prime number...)

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Re: Finding Primes
by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Aug 14, 2003 at 11:03 UTC
    The only thing you can say about n! + 1 is that it will only contain prime factors that are larger than n. And that the series (n! + 2) .. (n! + n) will not contain a prime number.

    Abigail

      The following theorem might help :

      Fermat, a French mathematician, once proved that : " If p is a prime number whilst GCD(p,a)==1 then ap-1 is congruous to 1 modulo p." But actually this theorem isn't enough, it helps you prove a number is not prime, not the other way round...

      Lucas, another French dude, came up with yet another theorem which looks for Mersenne's prime numbers :
      Given p an odd number, the number M=2p-1 is prime if and only if 2p-1 divides S(p-1) where S(n+1)=S(n)2 - 2, and S(1) = 4.


      Further down the road, Indian scientists came up with a very interesting paper you may want to check out : they probably have an answer to your problem : <a href=http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/news/primality.pdf>primality.pdf</a>...

      Hopefully, I've been of some help - maths are really interesting and I always enjoy digging into them...

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