Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
This is a list of articles about prime numbers. A prime number (or prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself. By Euclid's theorem, there are an infinite number of prime numbers. Subsets of the prime numbers may be generated with various formulas for primes.
A prime number is a natural number that has exactly two distinct natural number divisors: the number 1 and itself. To find all the prime numbers less than or equal to a given integer n by Eratosthenes' method: Create a list of consecutive integers from 2 through n: (2, 3, 4, ..., n). Initially, let p equal 2, the smallest prime number.
[1] [2] The numbers p corresponding to Mersenne primes must themselves be prime, although the vast majority of primes p do not lead to Mersenne primes—for example, 2 11 − 1 = 2047 = 23 × 89. [3] Meanwhile, perfect numbers are natural numbers that equal the sum of their positive proper divisors , which are divisors excluding the number itself.
A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only ways of writing it as a product, 1 × 5 or 5 × 1, involve 5 itself. However, 4 is composite because it is a ...
A prime sieve or prime number sieve is a fast type of algorithm for finding primes. There are many prime sieves. The simple sieve of Eratosthenes (250s BCE), the sieve of Sundaram (1934), the still faster but more complicated sieve of Atkin [1] (2003), sieve of Pritchard (1979), and various wheel sieves [2] are most common.
[1] Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects constructed from integers (for example, rational numbers), or defined as generalizations of the integers (for example, algebraic integers). Integers can be considered either in themselves or as solutions to equations (Diophantine geometry).
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
Chen's theorem, another weakening of Goldbach's conjecture, proves that for all sufficiently large n, = + where p is prime and q is either prime or semiprime. [note 1] Bordignon, Johnston, and Starichkova, [5] correcting and improving on Yamada, [6] proved an explicit version of Chen's theorem: every even number greater than , is the sum of a ...