Re:A previously unnoticed property of prime numbers
by squidfood on Monday March 14, 2016 @12:36PM
(#11283793)
Don't they call that the "strong law of small primes": you can discover lots of patterns in the first millions (or now billions) of primes that don't mean anything and don't hold up?
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Re:A previously unnoticed property of prime numbers
by mixedmath on Monday March 14, 2016 @01:40PM
(#11284195)
I think you're referring to the "strong law of small numbers", as in this excellent article by Guy [1]. But the idea is the same --- so very frequently, patterns that hold for even the first several numbers eventually fail to continue.
[1]: https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/2...