Friday, July 27, 2007

mystery of prime

What I am saying (in the first post entitled "Silly Primes") is that the prime numbers are not mystical. What is mystical is the relationship between the algorithmic process of counting and the notion of short-cuts (multiplication) and how the two "inter-twine". Are the two different entities? Yes. Counting is very pure. However, short-cuts require some sort of memory. The memory is in the form of additional "wiring"... like defining new kinds of number systems. Think about counting in a pure sense: the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Hebrews, Hindus, they all counted the same at the pure core level because they were all humans. But their short cut methods are what were different. Counting is simple, just repeat after me: "da, da, da, da, da, da, da....." Short-cutting and communicating about where the counting stops is a completely different ballgame and it is what produces the "mysterious" properties that we perceive in the primes.

I am very hopeful that new dialog will open up in the mathematics community. My challenge is still open: rewrite the fundamental theorem of arithmetic without using the words "product" or "multiplication."

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