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A primality test is an algorithm for determining whether an input number is prime.Among other fields of mathematics, it is used for cryptography.Unlike integer factorization, primality tests do not generally give prime factors, only stating whether the input number is prime or not.
In the example given above that is achieved on identifying 11 as next prime, giving a list of all primes less than or equal to 80. Note that numbers that will be discarded by a step are still used while marking the multiples in that step, e.g., for the multiples of 3 it is 3 × 3 = 9 , 3 × 5 = 15 , 3 × 7 = 21 , 3 × 9 = 27 , ..., 3 × 15 = 45 ...
Fermat's little theorem states that if p is prime and a is not divisible by p, then a p − 1 ≡ 1 ( mod p ) . {\displaystyle a^{p-1}\equiv 1{\pmod {p}}.} If one wants to test whether p is prime, then we can pick random integers a not divisible by p and see whether the congruence holds.
Those inputs can be numbers (for example, the decision problem "is the input a prime number?") or values of some other kind, such as strings of a formal language. The formal representation of a decision problem is a subset of the natural numbers. For decision problems on natural numbers, the set consists of those numbers that the decision ...
In computability theory, an undecidable problem is a decision problem for which an effective method (algorithm) to derive the correct answer does not exist. More formally, an undecidable problem is a problem whose language is not a recursive set ; see the article Decidable language .
An example of a decision problem is deciding with the help of an algorithm whether a given natural number is prime. Another example is the problem, "given two numbers x and y, does x evenly divide y?" A method for solving a decision problem, given in the form of an algorithm, is called a decision procedure for that problem.
A prime sieve works by creating a list of all integers up to a desired limit and progressively removing composite numbers (which it directly generates) until only primes are left. This is the most efficient way to obtain a large range of primes; however, to find individual primes, direct primality tests are more efficient [ citation needed ] .
This occurs for example when n is a probable prime to base a but not a strong probable prime to base a. [20]: 1402 If x is a nontrivial square root of 1 modulo n, since x 2 ≡ 1 (mod n), we know that n divides x 2 − 1 = (x − 1)(x + 1); since x ≢ ±1 (mod n), we know that n does not divide x − 1 nor x + 1.