Well just a profound realization that I had recently, its about how important prime numbers are for Mathematics....
For a moment, it occurred to me that all the natural numbers except one and primes can be represented as prime numbers.... Am sure every one knows this.... its called prime factorization....
Just imagine if there were no prime numbers... there will be no numbers other than unity (1)!!!
Surprising isn't it? Yes but that is true…. It’s really hard to have anything if not for prime numbers and the operation of scaling them. Yes, call it scaling… multiplying one with another to get a composite number.
The analogy that I can draw from this understanding is… We can consider prime numbers to be “Bricks” that occur naturally in nature, we just pile up these naturally occurring bricks to form what we want… These Primes are for sure the pillars on which the whole natural numbers stand and hence our understanding.
These primes have not definite pattern of repetitions, they are scattered across the whole space… occasionally you stumble by them and start using them from then on… They are the pillars that hold the numbers… All the composite numbers are constituents built by just scaling them!!!
Beauty isn’t it…
6 comments:
beauty of numbers... :-)
very interesting and nice comparison....
I dont see how they can be called as pillars, it just how humans defined a decimal system. If our system was based on fractions, primes would loose all ground. Ofcourse, I agree there is intricacy in the way they appear, random, that interests me and many mathematicians have poured their lives over it...If I define a system with 2 as the starting number, there are no primes.. if at all there is any pillar, I think it is 1 and thats it..
Humm nice way of thought there AP... but these primes come in when we discuss about Natural numbers and not fractions or decimal....
1 is a unity... there is no second to it... its wht I call a 'Don'
Humm if u have a system defined bt 2 as the starting point... they all tend to be only even numbes... and again scaled by the factor 2???... guess need to think more in this angle...
The pillers of the number system has been presented in a real nice manner!!
Fascinating math stuff primes are.
BTW, did you know there was a programming language based on prime numbers? Try this:
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/10/prime_number_pathology_fractra.php#more
Post a Comment