From: Glenn Morton (glennmorton@entouch.net)
Date: Sun Aug 03 2003 - 15:47:03 EDT
Hi George, I include a note to Burgy at the bottom.
>-----Original Message-----
>From: George Murphy [mailto:gmurphy@raex.com]
>Sent: Sunday, August 03, 2003 1:04 PM
>To: Glenn Morton
>Cc: asa@calvin.edu
George originally wrote:
>> > There is a basic difference between the Fibonacci sequence
>> >& the primes. As you
>> >note, there is a formula with which one can generate as many
>> >members of the 1st sequence
>> >as you wish. But there is no general formula for generating
>> >primes (unless there's been
>> >a new discovery I haven't heard of, a possibility since I'm hardly
>> >a number theorist).
>> >All proposed prime-generating formulas have been found to break
>> >down at some point.
After my mention of the sieve of Eratosthenes he writes:
> Don't need to - I learned about it from Gamow's _One, Two,
>Three ... Infinity_
>when I was about 14. It isn't a prime-generating formula but a device for
>systematically checking to see if numbers are prime. By a
>proposed prime-generating
>formula I mean something like
> f(n) = n^2 - n + 41
>which gives primes for n = 1, 2, ... 40 but for n = 41 gives a
>perfect square.
Ok, there isn't such a simple formula but why does a simple formula mean
anything? There is a prescription for how to iteratively catch the primes
and another but simpler formula for catching the numbers in Fibonacci. I
don't see what 'simple' has to do with it.
To Burgy, who wants to debate with me, You got the right spirit. It is the
debate which is fun.
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