Slashdot Mirror
New Pattern Found In Prime Numbers
stephen.schaubach writes "Spanish Mathematicians have discovered a new pattern in primes that surprisingly has gone unnoticed until now. 'They found that the distribution of the leading digit in the prime number sequence can be described by a generalization of Benford's law. ... Besides providing insight into the nature of primes, the finding could also have applications in areas such as fraud detection and stock market analysis. ... Benford's law (BL), named after physicist Frank Benford in 1938, describes the distribution of the leading digits of the numbers in a wide variety of data sets and mathematical sequences. Somewhat unexpectedly, the leading digits aren't randomly or uniformly distributed, but instead their distribution is logarithmic. That is, 1 as a first digit appears about 30% of the time, and the following digits appear with lower and lower frequency, with 9 appearing the least often.'"
It would be bad.
Bad as in "cross the streams" bad, or "according to an AC on Slashdot" bad ?
base-9 or base-11?
NEVER FORGET
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
The real question is did his feigned interest result in sexual intercourse?
Could this have any applications there?
"Well, I wasn't expecting The Spanish Mathematician . . ."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Nobody expects the Spanish Mathematicians!
that makes my /. id even more impressive :)
factor 966971: 966971
I just did it in base-2 and found that 100% of all primes start with the digit 1.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
All your base are belong to Benford.
You're right! I'm writing to my congress asking them to repeal Benford's Law.
I've always wondering how I could figure out when someone was trying to pass off a list of fraudulent primes. Glad to see that this problem is finally solved!
æeee!
I'm pretty sure that in base-2 with no zero-padding, 100% will start with 1. :-p
"Live free or don't."
I am admittedly not a mathematician, but I do have a good understanding of economics and finance, and I am not seeing how a pattern found in prime numbers could have any application to stock market analysis. Where is the interaction between prime numbers and the praxeology of buying and selling securities?
By understanding the patterns in prime numbers you can learn to spot them and avoid the sub-prime mortgage backed securities. Duh.
Dual Opteron < $600
They found that the distribution of the leading digit in the prime number sequence can be described by a generalization of Benford's law.
Yeah, how did we miss that? We need to pay more attention.
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
This is one of those moments that I love /.
Personally, I was trying to calculate the first 50M primes using the sieve of Erastothenes and then contructing a program that categorizes them but since you are doing all the work I say go ahead and I'll wait for the results.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
...good god my sarcasm detector failed, I deserve a mod down for that one.
My webcomic
Knock knock.
Who's there?
9/11.
9/11 who?
YOU SAID YOU'D NEVER FORGET!
Oh yeah? Well give me two minutes and check again.
Some encryption algorithms that were predicted to take forever to crack with today's technology, may in the long run end up taking the logarithm of forever.
I'm working on verifying this on paper. I might need some time.
What was that noise?? Sort of a whooshing sound, like something flying overhead.
I'm pretty sure that in base-2 with no zero-padding, 100% will start with 1. :-p
100% = 100/100 = 1 = 0b1, which, by the way, looks like "Obi" and sounds like "Obi-Wan" when you say it.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
"Bad" as in you will see the Message as hinted at by Carl Sagan's "Contact". It's from God and apparently decodes to: "We apologize for the inconvenience".
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It would be bad with binary. All numbers start with 1's.
Oh, yea, sorry 9/11, but I'm with 7/9 now.. bye.
I will never understand how people do that. You have the link right there. Even if you didn't open it to make sure, the link itself mentions the name "Mersenne Prime", and yet you write Mercene.
You have no chance to survive make your prime.
If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
AND end with 1...this must be a conspiracy
That starts with an "N", which is not a number.
Currently hooked on AMP
A friend of mine went to Hawaii last week, and I asked her if she'd ever been to Pearl* Harbor, and she said she'd only seen it from the air.
I replied, hey, just like the Japanese!
*That was hard not to type "Perl". I failed at first
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
Wow, first use of "I am a moron" I've seen in the field!
Hmm, or it is Mormon?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
*That was hard not to type "Perl". I failed at first
I remember that day as if it was yesterday. All of a sudden strange symbols were raining down from the sky. Men were shouting, "warning! warning!", "use strict!" ...
[this would be funnier if I was actually a Perl guy]
...unless they're imaginary...