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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 anyth
by squidfood 11y ago
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?
- mixedmath 11y agoI 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/22/Ford/Guy697-712.pdf https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/2...