Dave Bacon is a theoretical ski bum who is also an assistant research professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. His research is on quantum computing, his scientific passions extend to everything in physics, mathematics, computer science and beyond, and his personal pleasures include making wine, playing poker, skiing, camping, and daydreaming (although not all of those at the same time.)
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Category: Words
Posted on: September 26, 2008 9:02 PM, by Dave Bacon
The prime number theorem is a statement of a quantuplicity: there are about N/log N prime numbers in the first N numbers.
quantuplicity noun. The quantitative relationship between two amounts. Usually referring specifically to the case when this is expressed as a ratio giving the number of times that one contains another (or vice versa.)Calculating quantuplicities for different sociological quantities can lead one to a very complicated poset.
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Comments
You know this whole prime number thing has piqued my interest since those two Mersenne primes were found last week (or whenever). I'm teaching Real Analysis this semester for the math department and we've been talking about infinite sequences. Did you know, while no one has proven the Mersenne's are infinite, a couple of guys have conjectured that they are not only infinite but they follow some sort of an exponential form. This quantuplicity thing gives me the idea of potentially comparing Mersenne primes to regular primes (which Euclid actually proved were infinite).
Hmmm... And it's Saturday night and what am I doing? Replying to a blog post about prime numbers. Such is life when one is married with children. Ok, off to read some more Murakami...
Posted by: Ian Durham | September 27, 2008 10:06 PM
Dave, speaking of words, the Alibi crossword this week had as a clue: "California town with an accidentally palindromic bakery."
Posted by: Aaron | September 28, 2008 12:48 AM