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Re: prime numbers and African artifact
Michael Solomowitz (mystic@news.dorsai.org)
Mon, 10 Jul 1995 10:15:06 GMT
davidwss@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca wrote:
: 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."
:
Prime numbers are those numbers which can NOT be divided evenly by
another whole number... 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31...
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