4 ms·
wow, that is very nice. Does anyone else think they notice that primes are near to highly divisible numbers?
by pehrlich 14y ago
wow, that is very nice. Does anyone else think they notice that primes are near to highly divisible numbers?
- zipdog 14y agoI recall a successful 'highest prime' search using a system that checked numbers of the form 2^n - 1 (or something like that)
- acoster 14y agoThose are called Mersenne Primes, and are in the form 2^p - 1, where p is a prime number.
- recursive 14y agoThat does make a certain amount of intuitive sense, in rough terms. In a certain "region" of the integral number line, based on the magnitude of the contained numbers, we expect a certain total number of prime factors. It makes sense that highly composite numbers might be near by primes in order to "balance out". None of this is rigorous, but I think contains some intuition with a kernel of truth.