Figure this one out...

[(=DK=)Samonuh]

I'll stick to answering problems that have actual meaning in the real world.

[kjeopardy]

I'll stick to answering problems that have actual meaning in the real world.

That's your prerogative .

[Darth Crater]

I worked out that X couldn't be larger than 48 by looking at the divisors of p=5, 7, and 11. I then got about halfway through writing a script to brute-force check X=48 against the first 500 primes before getting distracted and having to leave. That would've given me a "good enough" solution, though certainly not a proof.

[kjeopardy]

I worked out that X couldn't be larger than 48 by looking at the divisors of p=5, 7, and 11. I then got about halfway through writing a script to brute-force check X=48 against the first 500 primes before getting distracted and having to leave. That would've given me a "good enough" solution, though certainly not a proof.

Of course it's not a proof, but its's pretty strong evidence. I posted a proof on the previous page, you can check it.

[Darth Crater]

Yeah. The problem is that, while it's certainly strong evidence, mathematically speaking it's useless. I wouldn't have done that if I could come up with a proof in the first place. I guess it's showing that I did all my higher math in high school and spent the last 4 years dealing with logic, sets, and such rather than algebra, that I didn't even bother trying to factor it.

[kjeopardy]

Yeah. The problem is that, while it's certainly strong evidence,mathematically speaking it's useless . I wouldn't have done that if I could come up with a proof in the first place. I guess it's showing that I did all my higher math in high school and spent the last 4 years dealing with logic, sets, and such rather than algebra, that I didn't even bother trying to factor it.

It's funny, I know. Practically anything in math done by computer is useless, since a computer can only check a finite number of cases, and we want to know that p^4-1 is divisble by 48 as p tends to infinity.

What profession/field are you in if you deal with sets and logic and such?

I'm just a high school student, and I may plan to pursue a career in math. I would assume you know stuff like Cantor's Diagonal Argument, bijections between infinite sets, etc.


Regards,
3.1415926535...

[Darth Crater]

I've just finished a Computer Science degree. So, yes, I did sets, countability, etc more recently than algebra or calc. I remember them better, though I haven't used them all that much since. I get the most use out of things like propositional logic.

[kjeopardy]

I've just finished a Computer Science degree. So, yes, I did sets, countability, etc more recently than algebra or calc. I remember them better, though I haven't used them all that much since. I get the most use out of things like propositional logic.

I don't really know what propositional logic is, so I can't discuss that . What do you do as a computer scientist?

[(SWGO)Kren]

Reminds me of the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy all these questions...

[kjeopardy]

Reminds me of the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy all these questions...

This post is the first step in turning my beautiful mathematics column into a slowly degenerating thread for nonsense .