Re: What can you do with a 12-million-digit prime number? | csmonitor.com

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Steve Lamont <spl () ncmir ucsd edu>
Date: October 1, 2008 2:13:35 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] What can you do with a 12-million-digit prime  
number? | csmonitor.com

> What can you do with a 12-million-digit prime number?
> By Andrew Heining | 09.30.08
>
> [. . .]
>
> Besides keeping your identity secure, primes have long been used as a
> math shortcut, helping with factoring, linear equations, and other
> things you probably haven't thought about since high school.

This passage strikes me as incredibly sad and disturbing.

In dismissing "factoring [and] linear equations" as things "you
probably haven't thought about since high school", the author of this
piece perhaps unintentionally explains why a number of things in
modern life seem to have gone badly wrong.

A little knowledge of basic mathematics, for example, might have
prevented or at least ameliorated the current crisis in the financial
markets.  The inability to understand and use numbers and simple
equations or formulae and the critical thinking skills which go with
them is probably partly at the root of buyer's lack of understanding
of their now exploding mortgages.

Basic math, the kind you learned in high school, would have told
buyers that they weren't going to be able pay the now exorbitant
mortgage interest rates.

Basic math, the kind you learned in high school, would have the buyers
of those mortgages that they were buying into a Ponzi scheme which
would come crashing down on their heads.

I'm sure readers of this list can think of more examples.

Math. . . it isn't just for High School any more.

                                                        spl




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