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Ask HN: Why does Google fail to judge whether X is prime
If you type "is 1000000007 prime" into google, you'll find that google suggests that 1000000007 is not a prime.
See https://i.imgur.com/ZWyoxLx.png
However, 1000000007 is a well-known prime used in many programming competitions or online judges.
The same thing will happen if you type "is 15485863 prime" into google. (which is the 1000000th prime)
See https://i.imgur.com/vrCKqL7.png
Perhaps, starting with 1299709 (the 100000th prime), the answers might be all wrong.
It seems that determining whether an input number is prime should not go wrong easily.
So, why does google fail to do that?
- lnyan 6y agoHere are the screenshots used in the post 1000000007: https://i.imgur.com/ZWyoxLx.png https://i.imgur.com/ZWyoxLx.png 15485863: https://i.imgur.com/vrCKqL7.png https://i.imgur.com/vrCKqL7.png
- PaulHoule 6y agoI think Wolfram Alpha would try to parse the query and turn it into a statement like: PrimeQ[1000000007] https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/PrimeQ.html https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/PrimeQ.html I think Google is not doing that, instead they are scraping the web for spam sites that have automatically generated answers such as https://bloodpressureok.com/reading/172-over-67/ https://bloodpressureok.com/reading/172-over-67/ which is bound to be less reliable.
- Spooky23 6y agoThat was a bing marketing thing for awhile. Bing would answer certain questions from authoritative sources. Google has an inconsistent approach.