In Search of Woodall Primes
More or Less: Behind the Stats
English - June 30, 2017 22:00 - 20 minutes - 18.3 MB - ★★★★★ - 740 ratingsNews Education Science Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
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It’s the 100 year centenary of an obscure type of prime number – the Woodall Primes. To celebrate, stand-up mathematician Matt Parker is calling on listeners to search for a new one. Ordinary citizens can already help search for Mersenne Prime numbers by lending computer processing power to GIMPS – the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. Matt explains to Tim Harford what a Woodall Prime is, and why it deserves more attention.
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(image Matt Parker / photographer: Steve Ullathorne)