"Prime numbers, which are divisible only by themselves and one, have little mathematical importance. Yet the oddities have long fascinated amateur and professional mathematicians."
I can only guess, though, that Fox News stopped reading that New Scientist article at the "diamond" metaphor because the next paragraph states directly that prime numbers "underpin the cryptographic techniques used to make online transactions secure," which even to the layperson should seem pretty damn important...
They also appear to claim that the newly discovered prime is "2 multiplied by itself 57,885,161 times". It's been a while since I studied math, but I'm pretty sure that's not prime.
"A small portion of the 17 million digits in the number 2 multiplied by itself 57,885,161 times -- the first Mersenne prime discovered in four years. (FoxNews.com)"
Their first statement "there is little mathematical value to finding a single new prime" is very true, but in the second half of the article someone demonstrates his 'competence'...
Without having to wade through pages and pages of information, you very quickly gain an understanding of the basics.
A 30-second skim of this page - which includes "Prime numbers are very important in mathematics and computer science." - would've prevented this reporter making such an obvious mistake.
>Prime numbers, which are divisible only by themselves and one, have little mathematical importance. Yet the oddities have long fascinated amateur and professional mathematicians.
Admittedly, getting through a full Fox News article is no fun.
"Prime numbers, which are divisible only by themselves and one, have little mathematical importance. Yet the oddities have long fascinated amateur and professional mathematicians."
I'm not a big fan of Fox news (or any mainstream media for that matter) but in their defense, they basically reprinted the article from New Scientist. They even linked to the original article in their story.
* Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter.
* If the original title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link anyway.
* Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.
Editorializing titles is explicitly frowned upon: you're sharing an opinion rather than sharing the article itself. The remaining news has already been posted repeatedly, so really this should not have been posted at all.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 55.9 ms ] threadThis article really highlights the need for better science journalism. Not to mention several paragraphs are plagiarized directly from this other article: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23138-new-17milliondig...
I can only guess, though, that Fox News stopped reading that New Scientist article at the "diamond" metaphor because the next paragraph states directly that prime numbers "underpin the cryptographic techniques used to make online transactions secure," which even to the layperson should seem pretty damn important...
He should have written it like that:
>2 multiplied by itself 57,885,161 times (written mathematically as 2^57,885,161) - 1
"A small portion of the 17 million digits in the number 2 multiplied by itself 57,885,161 times -- the first Mersenne prime discovered in four years. (FoxNews.com)"
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number
Without having to wade through pages and pages of information, you very quickly gain an understanding of the basics.
A 30-second skim of this page - which includes "Prime numbers are very important in mathematics and computer science." - would've prevented this reporter making such an obvious mistake.
As much as I dislike Fox "news", this headline feels like complete BS.
"Though there is little mathematical value to finding a single new prime"
Which to me is a perfectly reasonable sentence.
Edit: Doh sorry, everyone is right later in the article it says a stupid
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/02/05/worlds-largest-pri...
>Prime numbers, which are divisible only by themselves and one, have little mathematical importance. Yet the oddities have long fascinated amateur and professional mathematicians.
Admittedly, getting through a full Fox News article is no fun.
"Prime numbers, which are divisible only by themselves and one, have little mathematical importance. Yet the oddities have long fascinated amateur and professional mathematicians."
* Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter.
* If the original title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link anyway.
* Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.
Editorializing titles is explicitly frowned upon: you're sharing an opinion rather than sharing the article itself. The remaining news has already been posted repeatedly, so really this should not have been posted at all.