Structure and randomness in the prime numbers

terrytao.wordpress.com

25 points·wallflower··9 comments

Cool, I hadn't heard about the AKS primality test before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKS_primality_test

On a side note, if you don't know who Terrence Tao is you should read his bio. It's pretty interesting: child prodigy, math olympiad, Fields Medal etc.

damn, can't get it here china.

Proxy? If you can't find one that's unblocked, e-mail my username at gmail

I've been told they've recently released new filtering tech for the great firewall that blocks all proxy's and published tor nodes.

Tor isn't playing it up, but they're starting to develop a subset of nodes that aren't published and wont be immediately blocked. Because they're obscuring their efforts I can't find a link for you. A shell account and an ssh socks proxy will still work as far as I know.

On the last slide he writes that "We believe that the primes do not observe any significant pattern beyond the obvious ones (e.g. mostly being odd)..."

But is there an even prime other than 2? I guess not, otherwise it will be divisible by 2.

That's why he wrote "mostly being odd" and that's why he called it obvious.

Yes, I know it's a nitpick but if there is only 1 exception, it is not mostly. If he says mostly, there is a suggestion that there may be other even primes.

If you know it's a nitpick, stop picking at nits.

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