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Money to be made in numbers.

Lurid Archive

00:16 / 03.08.05

I've talked about this before, I think, but you can win money by finding primes. Specifically, for finding a 10 million digit prime. Its an odd concept, in some ways,

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is offering a $100,000 award to the first person or group to discover a ten million digit prime number.

Whats more is that the Marsenne Prime Organisation will give you free software that will try to find a prime for you.

semioticrobotic

01:25 / 03.08.05

One of my math professors once told us about this. I've seen the software in action before; several computer in ou campus computer lab had it running in the background, 'round the clock, looking for those primes.

Does one get to name a prime when one discovers it?

Lurid Archive

03:39 / 03.08.05

If you use the software, then Marsenne beat you to it. But I think that naming a single number is rare, unless the number is particularly significant.

astrojax69

20:57 / 03.08.05

i'm guessing if you discover it, you can call it what you want... but it rather depends on what the rest of the world decides to call it, i suppose!

i'd call mine jax.

[actually, in another thread somewhere i mention that i invented a number, called 'godzoogol', which is defined as precisely one more than the very largest number you can think of. i'm guessing this number gets bigger as you get older and could prove significant in a mathematical description of child psychology. or not

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