Re: prime numbers and African artifact

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Rob Freundlich (rsf@mother.idx.com) wrote:
: In article <5JUL199517392971@almach.caltech.edu>,
: shoppa@almach.caltech.edu (Timothy D. Shoppa) wrote:
: >In article <DB8qqE.3uI@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
: shallit@graceland.uwaterloo.ca (Jeffrey Shallit) writes...
: >> "A piece of bone found in Africa and dated at around 8,500 B.C.
: >>has engraved markings containing what appear to be representations of
: >>the numbers 11, 13, 17, and 19, all of which are prime numbers ..."
: >>
: >What? They left out 9, 15, and 21, some of the most useful prime numbers
: >of all! :^)

: No, no, no. Those are the *even* numbers! The primes are 1, 4, 9, 16, 25,
: 36, etc.

Wrong - those are ROUND numbers. The primes are 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13,
21, 34, etc. It's as easy as 3.1415.....

David Wasserman (davidwss@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca)
Curmudgeon-At-Large (DWasserman@edc.gov.ab.ca)
"The older I get, the more value I place on experience."

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