World's largest prime number found!

[Asher]

Originally posted by Solver
Asher, how do you guys over there have such good CS education? Seriously. I mean, highschool SQL projects, compiler construction courses in university, that stuff. Over here, we do of course also have high school students capable of writing a SQL query or coding a database interface, but those are all enthusiasts. Schools aren't even supposed to teach the very basics of programming.

I went to a very "academic" public school, one of the ones that had full IB (I'm sure they have them in your country: http://www.ibo.org/ibo/index.cfm).

I took lots of computer programming options, then in my final year I took a full-year Computer Science IB course where we did advanced stuff equivalent to the first couple years of university. Then I went to university right after. As far as I know, a lot of the advanced stuff like compiler construction is standard across Canadian compsci universities.

So I really envy you guys in countries where it's possible to get a CS degree and learn something useful with direct relevant to CS, and not a CS degree where you get to learn some theory, a load of math, only some of which will be useful, and nothing tat would help you ever code better...

It's a balance for most people at my school -- we do a lot of math and theory still. It's possible to do a CS degree with only 2 programming courses at my schoool, if your concentration is theoretical computer science. I'm in a software engineering concentration, so I do a lot of practical stuff. I still had to suffer through many, many high level math and theory courses...

[Solver]

Schools with IB courses here... hehe, I wish! The most 'hardcore' school we have here is the one that differs by teaching extra math. Then again, that extra amounts to mentioning stuff such as trigonometric notation of complex numbers and teaching basic calculus too, because, lo and behold, calculus is no longer in the regular school syllabus here. And the theory of probability is barely given a mention.

It's a balance for most people at my school -- we do a lot of math and theory still. It's possible to do a CS degree with only 2 programming courses at my schoool, if your concentration is theoretical computer science. I'm in a software engineering concentration, so I do a lot of practical stuff. I still had to suffer through many, many high level math and theory courses...

Also possible to do a lot of theory here... the problem is, it is impossible to do a lot of practice. No compiler construction. No network administration (although they will take a semester to teach you about the inner workings of Ethernet networks and routing). No Windows programming, basta. Nothing in x86 assemblies - Risc-16 is all there is.

The uni here offers two courses... a CS one and a programming (software engineering) one. Guess what the difference is? Drum roll please... none! Same syllabus, same lectures, same everything, only the software engineers can opt to have a diploma after 2 years and have their education complete as opposed to the CS guys who do it for four years. Wow, what great software engineers are they gonna be after graduating when they haven't been told to write a Windows app or call an API function throughout their entire course.

Out of curiosity, what sort of math do you do there? Pure hardcore math - by that, I refer to highly advanced algebra, or do you have logic, set theory, algorithm and number theory courses instead?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Solver
Also possible to do a lot of theory here... the problem is, it is impossible to do a lot of practice. No compiler construction. No network administration (although they will take a semester to teach you about the inner workings of Ethernet networks and routing). No Windows programming, basta. Nothing in x86 assemblies - Risc-16 is all there is.

We haven't used x86 at school -- the two courses where I've used assembly were SPARC and then MIPS.

The uni here offers two courses... a CS one and a programming (software engineering) one. Guess what the difference is? Drum roll please... none! Same syllabus, same lectures, same everything, only the software engineers can opt to have a diploma after 2 years and have their education complete as opposed to the CS guys who do it for four years. Wow, what great software engineers are they gonna be after graduating when they haven't been told to write a Windows app or call an API function throughout their entire course.

I've never written a "Windows" program at school either (that is, using the Win32 API). That is never taught at my school, as far as I know. They don't teach to specific APIs either, but the community colleges in the area do.

I've written large programs at school, using Java, C++, C#, C, Pascal...APIs such as OpenGL, RMI, .NET, etc. But none of those are actually taught straight-out (with the exception of C++ and Java being taught in 1st year). They say they'll use those languages, those tools, and those environments...and it's up to you to learn that.

They teach the higher level ideas in the courses, and the programming languages and APIs are just conidental things you learn on the way.

Out of curiosity, what sort of math do you do there? Pure hardcore math - by that, I refer to highly advanced algebra, or do you have logic, set theory, algorithm and number theory courses instead?

Linear algebra, discrete mathematics, combinatorial mathematics, logic courses, set theory, analysis, number theory, and probably some I left out...

[Apocalypse]

Originally posted by Solver
Asher, how do you guys over there have such good CS education? Seriously. I mean, highschool SQL projects, compiler construction courses in university, that stuff. Over here, we do of course also have high school students capable of writing a SQL query or coding a database interface, but those are all enthusiasts. Schools aren't even supposed to teach the very basics of programming.

Which is why universities end up sucking. They start out with a group of 150 students, of which a part have been doing some coding and are thus far more advanced, whereas the rest have never seen a line of code in any comp language. So then they spend the first year teaching the basic programming concepts and the syntax of some language. And leave it at that, later and concurrently going into a lot of math, even go into stuff such as basic assembly language, but don't teach anything at all about real-world programming. Forget the WinMain function, it's all limited to simplistic algorithms running on consoles...

So I really envy you guys in countries where it's possible to get a CS degree and learn something useful with direct relevant to CS, and not a CS degree where you get to learn some theory, a load of math, only some of which will be useful, and nothing tat would help you ever code better...

Well the average high school in the United States will only give you about a year of C++ and maybe a semester of some language like Java or Visual Basic. But you do learn enough to make searchable databases at least.

[Solver]

Ahh. Then maybe we're not THAT much worse off here as I'd tend to think. But one has to wonder, if students are supposed to learn the APIs, .NET framework and the other tools themselves, then what the point of universities is, since they're unable to produce quality coders by themselves .

Linear algebra

:shudder:

[Asher]

Originally posted by Solver
Ahh. Then maybe we're not THAT much worse off here as I'd tend to think. But one has to wonder, if students are supposed to learn the APIs, .NET framework and the other tools themselves, then what the point of universities is, since they're unable to produce quality coders by themselves .

Quality code is something you gain with experience and with an understanding of the system design. The languages and APIs themselves are easy enough that it's not really worth the time to teach to university students, who should be bright enough to figure it out on their own. (like philosophy )

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Asher


Quality code is something you gain with experience and with an understanding of the system design. The languages and APIs themselves are easy enough that it's not really worth the time to teach to university students, who should be bright enough to figure it out on their own. (like philosophy )

It's quite nice to see that you agree with me. Noone expects a high school pupil to make quality code or even more crucial, high quality designs. Maybe there are hope for you .

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Ecthy
Yeah, the "-1" should be outside of the bracket.

No it shouldn't. Jaguar was saying they should test 2 to the number they just came up with.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Solver
Asher, how do you guys over there have such good CS education? Seriously. I mean, highschool SQL projects, compiler construction courses in university, that stuff. Over here, we do of course also have high school students capable of writing a SQL query or coding a database interface, but those are all enthusiasts. Schools aren't even supposed to teach the very basics of programming.

We actually have decent secondary education?

/me hasn't really done much database stuff since Intro to Data Struct... errr AP Comp Sci, but we have classes in AI and computer architecture and supercomputer programming

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Jaguar
Kuci meant 2^(2^30,402,457 - 1) - 1.

Remember that the -1 isn't part of the exponent, because of order of operations. The above number is prime, because of a rule that 2 to a prime number minus one equals another prime. (For example, 2^3 - 1 equals 7, which is prime. 2^7 - 1 equals 127, which is prime, and so on.)

It's not necessarily prime. That's an unproven assumption.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Quick question: How many numbers would there be in that number ( 2^(2^30,402,456)) ? It might be a good idea to use words to reply

You mean how many digits? It'd be roughly 10^10,000,000, or 10 * 1 googol^3.

[Petek]

Originally posted by Jaguar
The above number is prime, because of a rule that 2 to a prime number minus one equals another prime. (For example, 2^3 - 1 equals 7, which is prime. 2^7 - 1 equals 127, which is prime, and so on.)

Counterexample: 11 is prime, but

2^11 - 1 = 2047 = 23*89

[Dis]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
I can't believe how such an inane thread has got so heated

ditto. 71 posts. I did not expect that.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
You mean how many digits? It'd be roughly 10^10,000,000, or 10 * 1 googol^3.

Ah yes, that would be quite a bit.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


It's not necessarily prime. That's an unproven assumption.

A rather bad one too.