Thread: Publishing prime pattern - question?

If I have found a pattern in primes (I'm keeping it to myself until I figure out what to do with it)... And now I can check if any number if prime in only 2 very very very simple steps that involve almost no math, a computer could calculate it in probably less than a second.

What should I do? Publish it? Or is there some market for this in the computer world? Any input? Thanks!

There are two things you need to do. You first need to write a paper, however brief, with a statement and proof of your pattern / test. Then, you can submit it to a journal for publication.

To be honest, I am extremely skeptical about your claim. If there were such an obvious or easy test for primality, somebody probably would have seen it by now and it would be well-known. (We've been looking at primes for thousands of years.)

As for as I can tell the pattern works, I've manually checked it up through the first 100 primes, later I'm going to write a program to check it higher.
Thanks for the advice!

edit: also the test isn't obvious, but yes, it is easy.

Originally Posted by roninpro

Then, you can submit it to a journal for publication.

Do you have any suggestions for a journal or something similar? I don't know of any math magazines or what not.

Originally Posted by orange gold

As for as I can tell the pattern works, I've manually checked it up through the first 100 primes, later I'm going to write a program to check it higher.
Thanks for the advice!

edit: also the test isn't obvious, but yes, it is easy.

Just because something is true for the first 100 primes doesn't mean it is true for the next Infinite number of primes. As Roninpro said, you need to write a proof.

Originally Posted by orange gold

Do you have any suggestions for a journal or something similar? I don't know of any math magazines or what not.

You can publish on arXiv, which is what Perelman did for his proof of the Poincare conjecture (now theorem). This way you have a time stamp for the time of publication.

The first 100 primes are trivial.. sorry but you sound very unconvincing indeed.. but best of luck.

Ahhh! It doesn't work after the number 121.. And what I meant was the hundreds prime, not 100th prime. so I checked up to the number "103" ... anyways when I hit 121 I started realizing my pattern didn't work for things divisible by 11, and 13, and 15, etc. It was a neat pattern though.. What I was doing was squaring the number, taking the some of the digits that make up that number, and then took the sum again and kept doing it until I had a single digit number left and if that number was 9 than it wasn't prime. Other than that I only had to check if the number squared ended in 5, or if the number was divisible by 7. /:

My rule went as follows:

To get a list of primes:

Determine your range for the list of primes.
Get all the odd numbers in your range.
Divide all numbers by 7, any number that is evenly divisible is not prime, remove them.
Square all remaining numbers.
any number not ending in 1 or 9 is not prime, remove them.
Get the sum of the digits in a number for each number in your range, repeat this process till you have a one digit number.
(ie 15^2 = 225 --> 2+2+5 = 9
(ie 7^2 = 49 --> 4+9 = 13 --> 1+3 = 4)
Any number that has a sum of 9 is not prime, remove them. (with the 2 exceptions of the numbers: 3 & 5)
All remaining numbers ARE prime.

**This process will say that 1 is prime (which I consider as prime anyways.), 2 is not prime (which I don't consider as prime anyways.)

Pretty bummed right now, but I willn't give up /:

Originally Posted by orange gold

Ahhh! It doesn't work after the number 121.. And what I meant was the hundreds prime, not 100th prime. so I checked up to the number "103" ... anyways when I hit 121 I started realizing my pattern didn't work for things divisible by 11, and 13, and 15, etc. It was a neat pattern though.. What I was doing was squaring the number, taking the some of the digits that make up that number, and then took the sum again and kept doing it until I had a single digit number left and if that number was 9 than it wasn't prime. Other than that I only had to check if the number squared ended in 5, or if the number was divisible by 7. /:

My rule went as follows:

To get a list of primes:

Determine your range for the list of primes.
Get all the odd numbers in your range.
Divide all numbers by 7, any number that is evenly divisible is not prime, remove them.
Square all remaining numbers.
any number not ending in 1 or 9 is not prime, remove them.
Get the sum of the digits in a number for each number in your range, repeat this process till you have a one digit number.
(ie 15^2 = 225 --> 2+2+5 = 9
(ie 7^2 = 49 --> 4+9 = 13 --> 1+3 = 4)
Any number that has a sum of 9 is not prime, remove them. (with the 2 exceptions of the numbers: 3 & 5)
All remaining numbers ARE prime.

**This process will say that 1 is prime (which I consider as prime anyways.), 2 is not prime (which I don't consider as prime anyways.)

Pretty bummed right now, but I willn't give up /:

The fact that your pattern is dependent on the decimal representation of the numbers, for example "the sum of the digits", tells me ,in some sense, that the method is likely not to work. It may be more productive here, I think, to consider properties of the primes themselves and not how one represents them (decimal\base representation).

I don't think I made my point clear enough, so hopefully somebody can please do.

Originally Posted by orange gold

2 is not prime (which I don't consider as prime anyways.)

Really?

Originally Posted by orange gold

**This process will say that 1 is prime (which I consider as prime anyways.), 2 is not prime (which I don't consider as prime anyways.)

What is your definition of a prime?

I suggest that you read a book on elementary number theory. You will learn in one week material which has taken hundreds of years for the brightest people to come up with.