New Pattern Found In Prime Numbers 509
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.'"
Re:Other bases? (Score:5, Funny)
It would be bad.
Re:Other bases? (Score:5, Funny)
Bad as in "cross the streams" bad, or "according to an AC on Slashdot" bad ?
Re:Other bases? (Score:5, Funny)
base-9 or base-11?
NEVER FORGET
Re:Why do people study "math" in college? (Score:4, Funny)
The real question is did his feigned interest result in sexual intercourse?
Cryptography? (Score:5, Funny)
Could this have any applications there?
"Well, I wasn't expecting The Spanish Mathematician . . ."
Good for them (Score:4, Funny)
Nobody expects the Spanish Mathematicians!
Re:9 not too common? (Score:5, Funny)
that makes my /. id even more impressive :)
Re:Cryptography? (Score:5, Funny)
Our two main powers are insight into the nature of primes, fraud detection
and stock market analysis.
I'll come in again...
Re:Other bases? (Score:3, Funny)
I just did it in base-2 and found that 100% of all primes start with the digit 1.
Re:Other bases? (Score:5, Funny)
All your base are belong to Benford.
Re:Duh (Score:2, Funny)
You're right! I'm writing to my congress asking them to repeal Benford's Law.
Re:Stock market analysis? (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Re:Other bases? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure that in base-2 with no zero-padding, 100% will start with 1. :-p
Re:Stock market analysis? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
"...that surprisingly has gone unnoticed until now (Score:2, Funny)
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.
Re:Independent Verification (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Counter-example ... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Other bases? (Score:5, Funny)
Knock knock.
Who's there?
9/11.
9/11 who?
YOU SAID YOU'D NEVER FORGET!
Re:Other bases? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh yeah? Well give me two minutes and check again.
Re:Other bases? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Independent Verification (Score:1, Funny)
I'm working on verifying this on paper. I might need some time.
Re:Other bases? (Score:1, Funny)
What was that noise?? Sort of a whooshing sound, like something flying overhead.
Re:Other bases? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Other bases? (Score:5, Funny)
"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".
Re:Other bases? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Other bases? (Score:1, Funny)
Oh, yea, sorry 9/11, but I'm with 7/9 now.. bye.
Re:Other bases? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Other bases? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Other bases? (Score:4, Funny)
AND end with 1...this must be a conspiracy
Re:Other bases? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Other bases? (Score:4, Funny)
I replied, hey, just like the Japanese!
*That was hard not to type "Perl". I failed at first
Re:Other bases? (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, first use of "I am a moron" I've seen in the field!
Hmm, or it is Mormon?
Re:Other bases? (Score:1, Funny)
*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]
Re:Other bases? (Score:3, Funny)
...unless they're imaginary...