[105836] in Cypherpunks
Re: [spam 03.92/10.00 -pobox] Re: Goldbach's Conjecture - a
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Stewart)
Mon Nov 23 01:35:07 1998
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 01:21:40 -0500
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
In-Reply-To: <199811190620.AAA02077@wire.insync.net>
Reply-To: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
At 12:20 AM 11/19/98 -0600, Eric Cordian wrote:
>> Is there any work on whether odd numbers can always be represented as the
>> sum of primes?
>
>Goldbach originally suggested that all numbers greater than two could be
>expressed as the sum of three primes, if one tossed in 1 as a prime
>number. Euler pointed out that this was equivalent to even numbers
>greater than two being expressed as the sum of two primes.
>
>This seemed a somewhat cleaner formulation, and it was adopted.
well, you can express any odd number >= 7 as
the sum of 3 + an even number, so if Goldbach's conjecture is true,
then three primes are enough for the odd natural numbers
except 1, which is a special case, and 3 and 5 which are prime anyway.
Thanks!
Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
