[107322] in Cypherpunks
Re: Goldbach's Conjecture - a question about prime sums of odd
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ryan Anderson)
Sun Jan 10 21:30:12 1999
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 21:19:15 -0500 (EST)
From: Ryan Anderson <ryan@michonline.com>
To: Jim Choate <ravage@einstein.ssz.com>
cc: Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer <cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com>
In-Reply-To: <199811191722.LAA04172@einstein.ssz.com>
Reply-To: Ryan Anderson <ryan@michonline.com>
> A prime is defined as *ANY* number (note the definition doesn't mention
> sign or magnitude nor does it exclude any numbers a priori) that has no
> multiplicative factors other than itself and 1.
>
> 1 * 1 = 1 so it is clearly prime.
>
> Now, if a particular branch of number theory wants to extend it and make it
> only numbers >=2 that is fine, I'm not working in that branch anyway.
But isn't -11 * -1 = 11, therefore 11 isn't a prime?
By tradition, you only consider positive integers, but you note that the
negative numbers share the same properties, as long as you stay in the
same sign. Without that rule, you have major problems with the
definitions.
Ryan Anderson
PGP fp: 7E 8E C6 54 96 AC D9 57 E4 F8 AE 9C 10 7E 78 C9
