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Questions tagged [prime-numbers]

Prime numbers are natural numbers greater than 1 not divisible by any smaller number other than 1. This tag is intended for questions about, related to, or involving prime numbers.

A prime number (or a prime) is an element of the greater than $1$ that has no positive divisors other than $1$ and itself. A natural number greater than $1$ that is not a prime number is called a composite number [...] The fundamental theorem of arithmetic establishes the central role of primes in :

Any integer greater than $1$ can be expressed as a product of primes that is unique up to ordering.

Here you get the first 50 million of primes.

The concept of prime numbers is extended in ring theory, where an element $p$ of a ring $R$ is prime if and only if whenever $p\mid ab$, then $p\mid a$ or $p\mid b$.

One can easily see that this extends the definition of prime numbers in the natural numbers.

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Help with a prime number spiral which turns 90 degrees at each prime

I awoke with the following puzzle that I would like to investigate, but the answer may require some programming (it may not either). I have asked on the meta site and believe the question to be suitable and hopefully interesting for the…
Karl
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Is $7$ the only prime followed by a cube?

I discovered this site which claims that "$7$ is the only prime followed by a cube". I find this statement rather surprising. Is this true? Where might I find a proof that shows this? In my searching, I found this question, which is similar but…
David Starkey
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Meaning of Rays in Polar Plot of Prime Numbers

I recently began experimenting with gnuplot and I quickly made an interesting discovery. I plotted all of the prime numbers beneath 1 million in polar coordinates such that for every prime $p$, $(r,\theta) = (p,p)$. I was not expecting anything in…
dwymark
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What is the importance of the Collatz conjecture?

I have been fascinated by the Collatz problem since I first heard about it in high school. Take any natural number $n$. If $n$ is even, divide it by $2$ to get $n / 2$, if $n$ is odd multiply it by $3$ and add $1$ to obtain $3n + 1$. Repeat the…
Dan Brumleve
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Do we have negative prime numbers?

Do we have negative prime numbers? $..., -7, -5, -3, -2, ...$
user103028
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Sorting of prime gaps

Let $g_i$ be the $i^{th}$ prime gap $p_{i+1}-p_i.$ If we rearrange the sequence $ (g_{n,i})_{i=1}^n$ so that for any finite $n$, if the gaps are arranged from smallest to largest, we have a new sequence $(\hat{g}_{n,i})_{i=1}^n.$ For example, for $n…
daniel
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Deleting any digit yields a prime... is there a name for this?

My son likes his grilled cheese sandwich cut into various numbers, the number depends on his mood. His mother won't indulge his requests, but I often will. Here is the day he wanted 100: But today he wanted the prime 719, which I obliged. When…
Fixee
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The square roots of different primes are linearly independent over the field of rationals

I need to find a way of proving that the square roots of a finite set of different primes are linearly independent over the field of rationals. I've tried to solve the problem using elementary algebra and also using the theory of field…
user8465
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What is the Riemann-Zeta function?

In laymen's terms, as much as possible: What is the Riemann-Zeta function, and why does it come up so often with relation to prime numbers?
BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft
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Do Arithmetic Mean and Geometric Mean of Prime Numbers converge?

I was looking at a list of primes. I noticed that $ \frac{AM (p_1, p_2, \ldots, p_n)}{p_n}$ seemed to converge. This led me to try $ \frac{GM (p_1, p_2, \ldots, p_n)}{p_n}$ which also seemed to converge. I did a quick Excel graph and regression and…
Soham
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Why is $1$ not a prime number?

Why is $1$ not considered a prime number? Or, why is the definition of prime numbers given for integers greater than $1$?
bryn
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Different ways to prove there are infinitely many primes?

This is just a curiosity. I have come across multiple proofs of the fact that there are infinitely many primes, some of them were quite trivial, but some others were really, really fancy. I'll show you what proofs I have and I'd like to know more…
Patrick Da Silva
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Infiniteness of non-twin primes.

Well, we all know the twin prime conjecture. There are infinitely many primes $p$, such that $p+2$ is also prime. Well, I actually got asked in a discrete mathematics course, to prove that there are infinitely many primes $p$ such that $p + 2$ is…
Tomas Wolf
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A question about divisibility of sum of two consecutive primes

I was curious about the sum of two consecutive primes and after proving that the sum for the odd primes always has at least 3 prime divisors, I came up with this question: Find the least natural number $k$ so that there will be only a finite number…
CODE
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Finding a primitive root of a prime number

How would you find a primitive root of a prime number such as 761? How do you pick the primitive roots to test? Randomly? Thanks
user27617
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