Re: Towards a Formula for Primes

In article <1178736122.153283.217840@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"charleswehner@xxxxxxxxxxx" <charleswehner@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

There is no general formula for primes.

Wrong. There are such formulas in most intro number theory
textbooks. They are not terribly practical.

The CIA know that. When the Diffie-Hellman algorithm for data
encryption arrived, they got themselves a giant computer. The US
government banned such methods of encoding as the random-book code,
which cannot be broken. Instead, they put forward Diffie-Hellman as
the Public Key Encryption algorithm. There are two primes. One is the
public key, which anybody can use for coding. The other is the private
key that only the recipient has got. And only the private key will
decrypt the data.

No. First of all, you seem to be confusing Diffie-Hellman with
Rivest-Shamir-Adleman, also known as RSA. Second, in RSA
both primes are secret, it is their product that is the public key.

By the time you have a hundred-figure number, primes are millions of
millions apart.

No. Among the 100-digit numbers, the difference between
consecutive primes is, on average, only a few hundred.

I was BRILLIANTLY shot down in flames by "Quasi", when he showed that
simple addition will do this.

You know, this is the only redeeming statement in your entire post.
The worst cranks never admit they were wrong. I give you credit
for being a cut above that.

However, all forms of irrationality are DETERMINISTIC.

Because the two irrationals with which you are familiar, e and pi,
have simple expressions, you've decided that *all* forms of
irrationality are deterministic?

One wonders whether pseudo-randomness and irrationality are closely
related.

Then maybe one should read something about the two topics.
Knuth's Art of Computer Programming has a nice section on
pseudo-randomness. Niven has written a couple of good books
on irrationality.

--
Gerry Myerson (gerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) (i -> u for email)
.

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