2.920050977316 - Numberphile

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  • čas přidán 25. 11. 2020
  • Dr James Grime is discussing a new prime-generating constant.
    Check out Brilliant (get 20% off their premium service): brilliant.org/numberphile (sponsor)
    More links & stuff in full description below ↓↓↓
    Extra footage from this interview: • Prime Generating Const...
    More James Grime videos: bit.ly/grimevideos
    James Grime's website: www.singingbanana.com
    Mills' Constant video: • Awesome Prime Number C...
    A Prime-Representing Constant by Dylan Fridman, Juli Garbulsky, Bruno Glecer, James Grime & Massi Tron Florentin: www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/1...
    Numberphile is supported by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI): bit.ly/MSRINumberphile
    We are also supported by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. www.simonsfoundation.org/outr...
    And support from Math For America - www.mathforamerica.org/
    NUMBERPHILE
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    Videos by Brady Haran
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Komentáře • 1,3K

  • @bglecer
    @bglecer Před 3 lety +2891

    Hi everyone! I'm one of the authors of the paper. First of all, special thanks to James for helping a bunch of random friends from another country publish our first paper, AND making a Numberphile video about it!
    If anyone's interested in a challenge here are some things we didn't manege to prove:
    -Is the constant transcendental?
    -What happens to the sequence if we pick our starting constant f1 to be a rational number? Does it always get "stuck" at a certain point?
    Also feel free to ask us anything, we are very glad to see people commenting about their own research and experiments on the formula!
    And if you feel you made any new or interesting discovery about the formula or constant, please do post about it!

    • @Simpson17866
      @Simpson17866 Před 3 lety +153

      "Also feel free to ask us anything"
      How does it feel knowing you're famous now? :)

    • @piotrarturklos
      @piotrarturklos Před 3 lety +109

      Did you check how many decimal digits are needed to generate a given number of primes? Let's call this number N. If the number of digits in your constant is something like log(N) or sqrt(N), then that would be awesome, because the constant could be used to efficiently compute a lot of primes on computers.

    • @lukevideckis2260
      @lukevideckis2260 Před 3 lety +50

      It doesn't matter how efficient this constant can calculate primes, because calculating the constant depends on knowing the primes

    • @bglecer
      @bglecer Před 3 lety +150

      @@Simpson17866 Haha ;P Nah, I don't think anyone will remember my name after watching the video. But it really is exiting being featured in a numberphile video! Also I'm having a little bit of impostor syndrome, Juli was the MVP that came up with this brilliant idea! I just brute-forced some digits, looked them up in OEIS, and found a possible candidate for the number we were after, that turned out to be the average of the smallest primes that do not divide n. Then I wrote some Python scripts to find lots of digits using that formula.

    • @bobrong9645
      @bobrong9645 Před 3 lety +20

      Congrats guys.

  • @JPerm
    @JPerm Před 3 lety +2687

    It's always a treat to see Dr James Grime know every constant to 10+ decimal places

    • @tecci5502
      @tecci5502 Před 3 lety +125

      Didn't expect to see you here

    • @1976kanthi
      @1976kanthi Před 3 lety +43

      Jperm! Big fan of yours
      Also jperm is my fav pll algorithm

    • @Ranzha_
      @Ranzha_ Před 3 lety +8

      Wow, you're up early! Hope you're well dude :)

    • @gauravpallod4768
      @gauravpallod4768 Před 3 lety +16

      DAMN! my fav youtubers on my 2 favorite activities together!!

    • @1976kanthi
      @1976kanthi Před 3 lety +4

      @@gauravpallod4768 same!

  • @jv8462
    @jv8462 Před 3 lety +1514

    James is always telling constants they're his favourite but he keeps dumping them for newer, hotter constants

    • @matiaanjansenvanrensburg771
      @matiaanjansenvanrensburg771 Před 3 lety +93

      He's cheating on his constants

    • @tetsi0815
      @tetsi0815 Před 3 lety +19

      "I'm gonna give you four words to live by: New is always better" - Barney Stinson ;-)

    • @ProfAwesomeO
      @ProfAwesomeO Před 3 lety +48

      He loves constants but not commitments :'(

    • @highpath4776
      @highpath4776 Před 3 lety +51

      He is unconstant in his love of a constant.

    • @HaloInverse
      @HaloInverse Před 3 lety +65

      His favorite constant is, in fact, a variable.

  • @jonopriestley9461
    @jonopriestley9461 Před 3 lety +1799

    “I’ve got a new favourite constant” (with a beaming face of joy). This is the purest form of numberphile and I love it 😍

    • @varunsrivastava6421
      @varunsrivastava6421 Před 3 lety +5

      numberphile greentext

    • @honorarymancunian7433
      @honorarymancunian7433 Před 3 lety +10

      His joy for numbers is so wholesome

    • @kfossa344
      @kfossa344 Před 3 lety

      I bet you’re American and spelled “favourite” with a “u” just because you’re that pathetic. And, before you ask, it’s because I enjoy it.

    • @Duckster1964
      @Duckster1964 Před 3 lety

      @@honorarymancunian7433 Everyone would have a "joy for numbers" if you skip the decimal part...
      This guy is a hack...

    • @honorarymancunian7433
      @honorarymancunian7433 Před 3 lety +11

      What's with the weird (and aggressive) comments in this chain??

  • @diegotejada55
    @diegotejada55 Před 3 lety +1549

    This title is so classic Numberphile

  • @durvsh
    @durvsh Před 3 lety +872

    Dr. James Grime still looks like the age when we used to solve puzzles on his channel

    • @MrAlRats
      @MrAlRats Před 3 lety +35

      Mathematicians age a lot slower than others. That's why they live so long; as long as they don't get stabbed, shot, contract a fatal disease or commit suicide (like Archimedes, Abel, Galois, Eisenstein, Riemann, Clifford, Ramanujan, von Neumann, Taniyama).

    • @gerald56
      @gerald56 Před 3 lety +23

      @@MrAlRats Mathematicians never get old. They only use some of their functions

    • @sidarthur8706
      @sidarthur8706 Před 3 lety +2

      maths is an easy job

    • @yqgowda2617
      @yqgowda2617 Před 3 lety

      As I was recommended to 4 year old video with him, I came here. Even now he look same..
      I was thinking the same as you before coming to comment section!!

    • @MarloTheBlueberry
      @MarloTheBlueberry Před rokem

      @sidarthur8706 make a constant that gives all truntactative primes

  • @noahfine4820
    @noahfine4820 Před 3 lety +404

    You've seen elf on the shelf, now get ready for James Grime on primes

    • @bsodcat
      @bsodcat Před 3 lety +9

      Grimin’ with the primes.

    • @RonWolfHowl
      @RonWolfHowl Před 3 lety +7

      *this is your brain on primes*
      [cracks egg into a pan]

    • @Muhahahahaz
      @Muhahahahaz Před 2 lety

      *Jame Grimes

    • @ragnkja
      @ragnkja Před rokem +1

      @@Muhahahahaz
      No, it’s just one James Grime.

    • @Triantalex
      @Triantalex Před 7 měsíci

      ??

  • @tifahefendijagaming9606
    @tifahefendijagaming9606 Před 3 lety +431

    His smile never gets old

  • @GvinahGui
    @GvinahGui Před 3 lety +134

    "Pretty important junk"
    "We need this junk"
    - Haran & Grimes, 2020

    • @Rudxain
      @Rudxain Před 2 lety +1

      We'll save this junk for later, when it stops being junk lol

    • @thatguyalex2835
      @thatguyalex2835 Před 2 lety +2

      I got this "junk" to work on my calculator, when I wrote a FOR loop. Sadly, this "junk" broke down after the 12th prime number. :)

    • @ragnkja
      @ragnkja Před rokem

      Just one Grime.

    • @Triantalex
      @Triantalex Před 7 měsíci

      ??

  • @pmcgee003
    @pmcgee003 Před 3 lety +92

    The sobering real-life side of research: ... "Received 16 Sep 2017, Accepted 29 May 2018, Published online: 30 Jan 2019"

    • @lonestarr1490
      @lonestarr1490 Před 3 lety +12

      Published in American Mathematical Monthly (121:1): November 2, 2020.

    • @arpitdas4263
      @arpitdas4263 Před 3 lety +3

      Yup.Just yup

    • @aadfg0
      @aadfg0 Před 3 lety +5

      @@lonestarr1490 Covered by Numberphile in November, uploaded November 26th, 2020, replied to you December 6th, 2020.

    • @asheep7797
      @asheep7797 Před 5 měsíci

      replied to ​​⁠@@aadfg0: 18 February 2024

  • @DisturbedNeo
    @DisturbedNeo Před 3 lety +87

    “I used the primes to calculate the primes”

  • @MattiaConti
    @MattiaConti Před 3 lety +262

    For a moment I though random guys solved one of the most difficult problem of all time. Even if this is not the case, they were very smart!

    • @Kokurorokuko
      @Kokurorokuko Před 3 lety +13

      You would definitely hear about it from everwhere

    • @icisne7315
      @icisne7315 Před 3 lety +8

      Random high schoolers no less.

    • @thomasi.4981
      @thomasi.4981 Před 3 lety +15

      @@icisne7315 They're very clearly above-average high schoolers, but yes it does look somewhat more impressive than it actually is. By the way they have a comment thread here where they answer technical questions about it. They're very aware it has limited applications but you can tell they're smart.

    • @lonestarr1490
      @lonestarr1490 Před 3 lety +8

      They might have, at least in part.
      Point is, up until now the primes generate the constant. But the constant actually _can_ generate the primes, as it was shown in the video. So, if someone manages to re-find this constant elsewhere where it might be representable in a closed form or at least computeable to some ludicrous precision, then we've won. (Apparently, the average of the sequence of smallest primes that do not devide _n_ doesn't do the trick.)

    • @Triantalex
      @Triantalex Před 7 měsíci

      ??

  • @vivekram6362
    @vivekram6362 Před 3 lety +7

    OMG ....It's James Grime💚💚💚💚💚....It's soo good to see him back making videos with Brady....
    Numberphile you are my favourite channel 💚💚

  • @trogdorstrngbd
    @trogdorstrngbd Před 3 lety +8

    I found this constant to be regular-level of interesting for a Numberphile video, and then when he pointed out that it turns out to be the same as the average of that easy-to-describe sequence, my mind was blown. That's why I keep coming back to this channel!

  • @fsf471
    @fsf471 Před 3 lety +611

    Engineers: Three take it or leave it

    • @Bukakanga
      @Bukakanga Před 3 lety +45

      @@Dducksquad no, 5 is for military purposes

    • @chiumingtsang2596
      @chiumingtsang2596 Před 3 lety +25

      Safety factor, 4

    • @thrownchance
      @thrownchance Před 3 lety +2

      tbh, we usually use 1.5 and for well understood stuff like the fatigue limit 1.2

    • @sbyrstall
      @sbyrstall Před 3 lety +1

      Or you can

    • @The85Overlord
      @The85Overlord Před 3 lety +5

      To be fair, 3 is not bad... We could also say : "It is in the order of magnitude of one" :-)

  • @jblen
    @jblen Před 3 lety +387

    I can't imagine being smart enough to see a maths video on CZcams and go "you know what, I can do better than that" and then find a new, seemingly very useful, constant.

    • @MrCheeze
      @MrCheeze Před 3 lety +42

      It's not really that it's useful, since you can embed an infinite amount of information in a decimal number. More of a mathematical curiosity. It's conceptually similar to the number 0.2030507011013017019023029...

    • @danieljensen2626
      @danieljensen2626 Před 3 lety +13

      Not really useful, primes with a reasonable number of digits are easy to calculate already. But a lot of pure math is just stuff that's mildly interesting.

    • @jblen
      @jblen Před 3 lety +22

      Yeah I get that it's not incredibly useful after watching the rest of the video, but it seemed like it is so my comment is still valid

    • @TheDetonadoBR
      @TheDetonadoBR Před 3 lety +11

      Everything is useless until it's not

    • @sentinelrecon8836
      @sentinelrecon8836 Před 3 lety +1

      169th like

  • @stevefrandsen
    @stevefrandsen Před 3 lety +7

    On US Thanksgiving Day and I wake up to a new video from James. Now that's something to be verythankful for!

  • @shreyansh894
    @shreyansh894 Před 3 lety +206

    A disadvantage for Numberphile is that nobody will write that number in the search bar even by mistake and find this video

    • @vojtechstrnad1
      @vojtechstrnad1 Před 3 lety +45

      Here come the "let's be honest, you didn't search for this" comments.

    • @anttihilja
      @anttihilja Před 3 lety +9

      The search also includes the description and the transcript of the video.

    • @OldQueer
      @OldQueer Před 3 lety +34

      If you aren't searching 2.920050977316 at least once a week, then are you really living? Very glad to see Numberphile FINALLY post about this.

    • @sby60118
      @sby60118 Před 3 lety

      Sad :’(

    • @mystic3549
      @mystic3549 Před 3 lety

      😂

  • @hewhomustnotbenamed5912
    @hewhomustnotbenamed5912 Před 3 lety +50

    Me to Mill's constant after watching this video: I don't want to play with you anymore.

  • @lagomoof
    @lagomoof Před 3 lety +4

    Seems like a relative of 2.3130367364335829063839516.., whose continued fraction is all the primes in order. i.e. take off the integer part and take the reciprocal repeatedly and this generates, 2, 3, 5, 7, etc. Again, made from the primes, so isn't predictive. Here's another number whose continued fraction gives the primes in a slightly different way: 2.7101020234300968374157495... (Hint: add the integer parts you get.)

  • @SkyAce200
    @SkyAce200 Před 3 lety +11

    2:40 James slightly singing "601 529" made me instantly think about the new emergency number from The IT Crowd

  • @ItachiUchiha-ns1il
    @ItachiUchiha-ns1il Před 3 lety +364

    Anybody else instantly click when they see James grime?

  • @SparkeyGames
    @SparkeyGames Před 3 lety +50

    Math teachers in primary school: prime numbers have no pattern.
    Every mathematician ever:
    You’re wrong but I have no proof
    *yet*

  • @TanookRoI
    @TanookRoI Před 3 lety +47

    Framed demonstration of Graham's number, by Graham himself, on the wall. My jealousy knows no bounds.

    • @harriehausenman8623
      @harriehausenman8623 Před 3 lety +1

      Yeah, that IS pretty cool.

    • @ffggddss
      @ffggddss Před 3 lety +6

      Graham and Grime,
      They almost rhyme,
      As does the preceding couplet, every time.
      Fred

    • @michaelcrosby7715
      @michaelcrosby7715 Před 3 lety

      Whoa, didn't notice that! Pretty cool

  • @Jumpyluff
    @Jumpyluff Před 3 lety +3

    I didn't realize until the other sequence at the end of the video that the hypothetical "predictive" version of their constant was almost identical or that they were completely on the right track for it. I thought that the next new biggest prime found would throw their number way off. Bravo to them for doing this, it makes it so much more impressive with that knowledge.

  • @sudheerthunga2155
    @sudheerthunga2155 Před 3 lety +4

    Yesss!!! Dr. James Grime after a long time ig!!

  • @xiaomarou9890
    @xiaomarou9890 Před 3 lety +13

    This number is so cool. Now someone has to find a way calculating it without using primes. Then it would be really a prime predicting number.

  • @ericpowell96
    @ericpowell96 Před 3 lety +3

    Dr. Grime is the best. I love how enthusiastic he is.

  • @johnathancorgan3994
    @johnathancorgan3994 Před 3 lety +18

    Nobody exudes more childlike joy at maths than James Grime.

  • @jordanhutchins2565
    @jordanhutchins2565 Před 3 lety +30

    "ahhh constant! We love a number" will be printed on my tombstone.

  • @mathwithjanine
    @mathwithjanine Před 3 lety

    This is my new favorite constant! So happy to see Dr James Grime back at it again!

  • @eFeXuy
    @eFeXuy Před 3 lety +35

    I like constants, we need more of those in these times of uncertainty

  • @nicolasmassa8146
    @nicolasmassa8146 Před 3 lety +11

    i am from argentina, really proud of our future!!

  • @matthewzimmers1097
    @matthewzimmers1097 Před 3 lety +3

    This is such a crazy improvement to classical “get primes” functions you can write today on computers.

  • @MrDemultiplexer
    @MrDemultiplexer Před 3 lety +33

    We missed James!

  • @superjugy
    @superjugy Před 3 lety

    Yes! James Grimes! Long time waiting for a video with him

  • @JavierSalcedoC
    @JavierSalcedoC Před 3 lety +12

    11:20 that series looks like how the musical scale is built when pulsing a string. half the notes are the note that the string is tuned, then come the thirds, the fifths and so on following prime number proportions. looks related

    • @danarves7452
      @danarves7452 Před 3 lety +5

      Yes, it does look like that. I think because the constant is in a sense a geometric average of all primes, which are the harmonics of a monotonic increasing sequence - the PNT, analogous to RH zeroes

  • @Ready4Music
    @Ready4Music Před 3 lety +33

    This is a certified James Prime (James Grime) moment.

    • @petros_adamopoulos
      @petros_adamopoulos Před 3 lety +4

      He definitely should make a typical ad of "I am James Grime and I approve of this constant" :)

    • @SAKEISUDMathee
      @SAKEISUDMathee Před 3 lety +3

      A Prime Grime moment

  • @jodikirsh
    @jodikirsh Před rokem +1

    Thank you so much James Grime for the great number!

  • @_intruder
    @_intruder Před 3 lety

    Finally a bit of Dr Grime! Much appreciated!

  • @windturbine6796
    @windturbine6796 Před 3 lety +3

    Numberphile hasn't changed in years and I love it.

  • @GoranNewsum
    @GoranNewsum Před 3 lety +9

    9:58 - And this proof is left as an exercise for the reader

  • @alexbenton226
    @alexbenton226 Před 3 lety

    This is one of the coolest videos that inspires me to keep looking into math :) I have been trying to get back to college for years, and this is one of those videos that makes me believe I can still do big things in my field

  • @amruthanand1330
    @amruthanand1330 Před 3 lety +1

    It's lovely to see James back. This feels like what numberphile used to be all about

  • @acetate909
    @acetate909 Před 3 lety +86

    My new favorite constant is social anxiety.

    • @CLBellamey
      @CLBellamey Před 3 lety +21

      The constant with which you never find your prime :P

    • @akisok0311
      @akisok0311 Před 3 lety +3

      @@CLBellamey HELPPPJSJSJF

  • @peppybocan
    @peppybocan Před 3 lety +10

    James is baaaack!

  • @mathsandsciencechannel
    @mathsandsciencechannel Před 3 lety +1

    This is amazing. Thanks sir. You have made me gather courage and confidence to start my channel.

  • @chomastiarnoldo1892
    @chomastiarnoldo1892 Před 3 lety +2

    Loving the framed signed Graham's Number brown sheet. RIP Ron.

  • @praagyadhungel1357
    @praagyadhungel1357 Před 3 lety +4

    Great teachers produce great minds.

  • @neorunner2394
    @neorunner2394 Před 3 lety +6

    Dr James Grime es una gran inspiración por la alegría y el entusiasmo que transmite en cada conocimiento, me hace sentir un apasionado por los números aunque no sea la ciencia a la cual me dedico. Todo mi respeto desde Argentina a los amigos de numberphile

    • @Anonymous-df8it
      @Anonymous-df8it Před 2 lety

      Fvjoid, freufjo donfn eefj donicv onjf fon juowf ijvjie vif. Mej cei dcim foqr frij ecj cic, cehj eijc eomc mefok fij. Efj jfo jfi vjn rvhr ckj. Numberphile veoj ejv eovj bej ewjfie James Grime.

  • @ShaMan54321
    @ShaMan54321 Před 3 lety +1

    That was so cool how the average of the sequence was the very number of the video. Amazing!

  • @Maniclout
    @Maniclout Před 3 lety +1

    Always happy to see james in a video

  • @jackchampion1455
    @jackchampion1455 Před 3 lety +160

    this guy is so damn cool

  • @mfx1
    @mfx1 Před 3 lety +12

    Me at the start "Hm, what's the catch?"............"Ah!"

  • @Thenoob27
    @Thenoob27 Před 3 lety +1

    We're in tenth year of Numberphile with James. How time flies...

  • @rosiefay7283
    @rosiefay7283 Před 3 lety +2

    As you point out, this method of compressing the sequence of primes into a real constant depends on the sequence being increasing and p_n < 2 p_{n-1}. If you wanted to compress a sequence of positive integers which doesn't necessarily have those properties, make your sequence's terms a_0, a_1,... the terms in a real constant x's continued fraction
    x = a_0 + 1/(a_1 + 1/(a_2 + 1/... ...))

  • @Really_Skunkey
    @Really_Skunkey Před 3 lety +18

    Since you're always multiplying by "1.(some junk)" does that mean the next prime is never above double the value of the previous?

    • @k-gstenborg3847
      @k-gstenborg3847 Před 3 lety +6

      9:36

    • @leadnitrate2194
      @leadnitrate2194 Před 3 lety +8

      Actually, Bertrand's postulate decrees that the prime after a prime p is always less than 2p-2.

    • @Really_Skunkey
      @Really_Skunkey Před 3 lety +1

      @@k-gstenborg3847 damn thanks, I was just listening to the first few minutes while on break

  • @tommaniacal
    @tommaniacal Před 3 lety +25

    It's so cool that it doesn't even skip twin primes since they're so close together

    • @filipsperl
      @filipsperl Před 3 lety +7

      Well, it's made so it doesn't skip those. After learning about how they made the constat, the spell kind of disappears.

  • @filiak42
    @filiak42 Před 3 lety

    I love the framed Graham’s number brownpaper. That along with magic circles video are my two favorite Numberphile entries.

  • @xGaLoSx
    @xGaLoSx Před 3 lety +1

    Dr. Grime is always my favorite. Impressive kids!

  • @1ucasvb
    @1ucasvb Před 3 lety +4

    I love the way Brady says "pretty important junk!"

  • @Ewtube101
    @Ewtube101 Před 3 lety +3

    "We love a number," yes, James, that's kind of the thing

  • @aiden3229
    @aiden3229 Před 3 lety

    This was amazing. This brought back my passion for math!

  • @TrickShotKoopa
    @TrickShotKoopa Před 3 lety +1

    This video makes me so happy.

  • @dane_with_swag
    @dane_with_swag Před 3 lety +7

    I see Dr James Grime. I click instantly

  • @tapashalister2250
    @tapashalister2250 Před 3 lety +12

    James Prime back at it again

  • @ZachGatesHere
    @ZachGatesHere Před 3 lety +2

    James Grime and getting excited about a number, the classic Numberphile video.

  • @q23main
    @q23main Před 3 lety +1

    Inspired viewers becoming scientists. This story proves the channel is a success. Great job Brady 😃

  • @Garbaz
    @Garbaz Před 3 lety +16

    A shame that the paper is paywalled. Would've liked to read some more about their findings.

    • @summertilling
      @summertilling Před 3 lety +2

      There's a version on the arXiv as well.

    • @frogstereighteeng5499
      @frogstereighteeng5499 Před 3 lety +4

      You could probably find it on scihub, lol

    • @comradeuu3837
      @comradeuu3837 Před 3 lety +1

      SciHub is your friend

    • @saudfata6236
      @saudfata6236 Před 3 lety +1

      Not much information but I thought you'd be interested. I tried it out in Java and unless I made mistakes, it was only accurate to about 37 then started deviating greatly. I also tried the generator algorithm and got a similar result.

    • @Keldor314
      @Keldor314 Před 3 lety +1

      @@saudfata6236 Did you run out of precision? This sort of algorithm only works as far as you have deeper and deeper digits to feed it.

  • @harriehausenman8623
    @harriehausenman8623 Před 3 lety +3

    Wonderful. As usual with Mr. Grime, the non-ageing mathematician :-)

  • @anjamoro8384
    @anjamoro8384 Před 3 lety +1

    As usual a nice video from numberphile

  • @KorriTimigan
    @KorriTimigan Před 3 lety

    I'm really bad at maths, I had no idea why I used to watch these videos as I don't understand anything about them.
    Then I saw James Grime and rememebered that I draw happiness from his passion! I've missed this guy!

  • @physicschemistryandquantum810

    This channel is really great

  • @sjoerdiscool1999
    @sjoerdiscool1999 Před 3 lety +17

    *A question*
    How many decimals would you need to accurately generate the first N primes?
    If it is 1000 decimals for lets say 1,000,000 primes, if someone could then compute 1000 decimals of this constant, then other people could use this constant to quickly generate primes, without needing to download huge amounts of data.

    • @sjoerdiscool1999
      @sjoerdiscool1999 Před 3 lety +11

      I'm working on a project now, and need to generate the first trillion primes. I can't download them anywhere, and generating them myself using conventional methods takes way too long. If I could copy a pre-computed constant like this one with way fewer digits, I could quickly generate primes that way.

    • @hvaghani
      @hvaghani Před 3 lety +3

      I was thinking the same

    • @njihnjihnjih
      @njihnjihnjih Před 3 lety +3

      @@sjoerdiscool1999 Try using a prime (eratosthenes) sieve for generating the primes, 1 billion primes should be generated in a few seconds with it. Took me 10 seconds for 2 billion with one I made once. I'm also almost 100% certain this constant does not store prime information more efficiently than just a sequence of primes.

    • @Lightn0x
      @Lightn0x Před 3 lety +1

      @@sjoerdiscool1999 use prime sieve with optimizations (bitmasks instead of lookup tables, skipping evens etc); even with basic (erathosthenes) sieve, it only takes about half a second on an average machine to generate primes up to a billion; there are a lot of improved, hyper-optimized versions out there, which can achieve amazing runtimes

    • @johnathancorgan3994
      @johnathancorgan3994 Před 3 lety +9

      With just some very quick testing it looks like the number of significant digits in the constant is equal to the number of correct primes generated before the sequence fails with a composite number.

  • @grankaspar
    @grankaspar Před 3 lety +1

    CONGRATULATIONS GUYS !!!! GOOD JOB !!!!!

  • @FerousFolly
    @FerousFolly Před 2 lety +2

    when james dropped the second instance of the constant my brain just popped

  • @jounik
    @jounik Před 3 lety +33

    So, what do we need to replace the "1" in the construction with so that the constant ends up being e=2.718281828459... instead?

    • @sentinelrecon8836
      @sentinelrecon8836 Před 3 lety +2

      Talk English not math

    • @refrashed
      @refrashed Před 3 lety

      The extra footage actually answers that question!

    • @jounik
      @jounik Před 3 lety +1

      @@refrashed No, it answers the question about the sequence generated by e but still with 1.

    • @morismateljan6458
      @morismateljan6458 Před 3 lety +2

      Great question! Probably around 0.9 or 0.8. But what do we need to get 3.14159..? A little bit above 1. It would be mad if the answer is 1.14159.. !

    • @Septimus_ii
      @Septimus_ii Před 3 lety

      @jj zun to get the full replacement constant for the 1 we would need all the digits of e and all the primes, but you can get the replacement constant to a specific number of decimal places with just a finite number of digits of e and a finite number of primes

  • @juangarcialopez4674
    @juangarcialopez4674 Před 3 lety +3

    The only thing i want to say is that i wish they tought maths in school with this excitement and these problems. Many more people would like maths.

    • @filipsperl
      @filipsperl Před 3 lety

      The problem is they don't have the time for, frankly, unnessesary maths like this. The curriculum is very strict and time sensitive, even for the normal stuff, which you might actually have a chance of using irl. The teachers are doing their best to squeeze all they have to teach into the few classes you have in a school year. Stuff like this is reserved for either recreational mathmaticians or university level number theory courses (and even in those, most of the stuff is watered down).

  • @Badsanta123456
    @Badsanta123456 Před 3 lety +2

    Proving that the Buenos Aires constant is trancendental would imply the riemann hypotesis. The proof for this is a bit complex.

  • @ShankarSivarajan
    @ShankarSivarajan Před 3 lety +7

    9:41
    Chebyshev said it and I'll say it again,

    There's always a prime between 2n and n.

    • @thomasi.4981
      @thomasi.4981 Před 3 lety

      Isn't that what the video said?

    • @fudgesauce
      @fudgesauce Před 3 lety +1

      @@thomasi.4981 -- Nope, the video says there is a prime between n and 2n where n is a prime. Shankar Sivirajan is quoting Chebyshev, who apparently said there is a prime between n and 2n for *any* n, not just prime n.

    • @thomasi.4981
      @thomasi.4981 Před 3 lety

      @@fudgesauce Oh, okay.

    • @ShankarSivarajan
      @ShankarSivarajan Před 3 lety +3

      @@fudgesauce That, and it's a mildly amusing rhyming couplet.

  • @toniokettner4821
    @toniokettner4821 Před 3 lety +51

    maths isn't done until we find a function
    p: ℕ → ℙ, n ↦ p(n)
    where p(n) is the n-th prime number

    • @ruinenlust_
      @ruinenlust_ Před 3 lety +27

      There is one, just not a closed algebraic form

    • @johnconacher7602
      @johnconacher7602 Před 3 lety +19

      how are you defining function? In a mathematical sense, and computational sense, this function exists, defined by how you just described it

    • @25thturtle48
      @25thturtle48 Před 3 lety +24

      But you've just described it 🤔

    • @toniokettner4821
      @toniokettner4821 Před 3 lety +7

      @@25thturtle48 but i didn't describe the algorithm. i want an algorithm which has time and space complexity

    • @JacobPlat
      @JacobPlat Před 3 lety +7

      @@toniokettner4821 there isn't one.

  • @mandelbro777
    @mandelbro777 Před 3 lety

    WOW! That's epic. It must be really satisfying that a viewer found this, and that he was inspired by a Numberphile video.
    Official academia, nil
    Internet crowd think, ONE
    :)

  • @kuanyewsim5660
    @kuanyewsim5660 Před 3 lety +2

    Dr James never seems to age.

  • @cheeseburgermonkey7104
    @cheeseburgermonkey7104 Před 3 lety +92

    when numberphile posts
    math nerds:
    *the return of the king*

  • @hadrienlondon4990
    @hadrienlondon4990 Před 3 lety +4

    I saw this video in my recommend 2.920050977316 seconds after it was posted.

  • @telesniper2
    @telesniper2 Před 6 měsíci +1

    Simon Plouffe has something similar along this line of investigation in his newest paper "A Set of Formula for Generating Primes". It's on the Arxiv. If you're not familiar with the name, he's the "P" in the "BPP formula" for the digits of Pi.

  • @alexpotts6520
    @alexpotts6520 Před 3 lety +2

    A cute bonus fact which I discovered after fiddling around with this for about ten minutes: try starting this same procedure, but instead of starting with the constant in the video, start with the number e.
    The result may surprise you...

    • @Bill_Woo
      @Bill_Woo Před 3 lety +1

      Bravo.
      In Excel, with A1=exp()
      A2=INT(A1)*(1+A1-INT(A1))
      and continuing down, it pukes out at 18, though I haven't analyzed it with regard to floating point imprecision.

    • @alexpotts6520
      @alexpotts6520 Před 3 lety +1

      @@Bill_Woo I actually worked this out backwards, I thought to myself "how could I, rather than generating the sequence of prime numbers, generate all the positive integers?" So then I went to the formula for doing this, calculated the first few terms, and realised it was the same as the series expansion for e.
      It's not a coincidence, it would carry on forever if not for floating points.

    • @Bill_Woo
      @Bill_Woo Před 3 lety

      @@alexpotts6520 Shrewd, working backwards. Great accomplishments come from that at times.
      Then again, working for managers in today's short sighted large corporate myopia, it has almost always seemed that my employment framework is always to be given (or wink, wink, implied) the answer, and asked to build the solution. In other words, I believe that a sadly vast number of the programs that I have written were under the ominous umbrella that I was asked to do it in order to justify a premise, rather than actually seek "the answer." Ergo, working backwards has ironically formed the launching point for a frighteningly large amount of my career's work :( However,
      In my defense, I have been something of a PITA maverick rather than corruptly playing along, when appropriate. And certainly many times I've worked backwards and actually "disproved" the premise - that no plausible set of "forward" inputs could support the end result that was first presumed.
      The big thing I suppose is that working backwards is more common than one might think. And it's the fastest way to solve some problems. For example, recognizing that "the answer must be both nonnegative and less than the U.S. population" often initiates a "backwards-oriented" approach that eliminates inefficient false paths.

  • @sjdpfisvrj
    @sjdpfisvrj Před 3 lety +12

    Isn't this just an "encoding" of the primes? I feel you could create infinitely many "constants" from which you can extract the primes again.

    • @johanrichter2695
      @johanrichter2695 Před 3 lety +3

      Yes, it is an encoding of the primes, that is what they mention towards the end. But it is not obvious you can encode them so that you can extract them in such a neat way.

    • @portobellomushroom5764
      @portobellomushroom5764 Před 3 lety +1

      The averaging process of "least prime that doesn't divide n" is an interesting way to encode such a constant though. But yeah it can't, to our knowledge, be used to predict new primes, which would set this apart as something revolutionary rather than something neat.

  • @DavidBeaumont
    @DavidBeaumont Před 3 lety +3

    That framed paper with Ron Graham's signature on, unexpected feels ... R.I.P. Ron Graham

  • @Tletna
    @Tletna Před 3 lety

    Thanks for the great video about an interesting constant!

  • @RandomlyGenius
    @RandomlyGenius Před 3 lety

    Fact: The title was just outstanding and Unique in my sight !

  • @nitrousoxide4970
    @nitrousoxide4970 Před 3 lety +7

    Is it possible that this constant could be calculated to an arbitrary number of decimal places without the use of primes, or are we definitely limited by the amount of primes we know?

    • @romajimamulo
      @romajimamulo Před 3 lety +7

      It's entirely unclear how you'd get it without knowing the primes to build it, but it has not been proven to be impossible

    • @maxkolbl1527
      @maxkolbl1527 Před 3 lety +2

      Possibly. If it was, it'd be kind of a big deal

    • @PerMortensen
      @PerMortensen Před 3 lety +3

      @@maxkolbl1527 Kind of a big deal is a liiiiiitle bit of an understatement. It would probably be the most important mathematical discovery to date.

    • @MrDannyDetail
      @MrDannyDetail Před 3 lety +2

      @@romajimamulo The bit he talks about at the end, where the other place the number arises means you can deduce the percentage of 2s, 3s 5s, etc that average out to make the number, makes me think that you could use a method like that to get the constant to a particular number of decimal place, then churn out at least a few more primes than you needed to know to start with.

    • @yadt
      @yadt Před 3 lety

      @@MrDannyDetail I suspect that in order to work out the proportion of numbers with each value, you need to know the prime numbers (as the values are all, by definition, primes). So again, to get more precision, you need more primes.

  • @CarlosToscanoOchoa
    @CarlosToscanoOchoa Před 3 lety +3

    Hey, idea: how many ways are there to paint a cube with 6 different colours with repetition... BUT taking into account the rotational symmetries

    • @poissonsumac7922
      @poissonsumac7922 Před 3 lety +1

      Look up Polya's Enumeration Theorem and Burnside's Lemma. They use group symmetries to answer questions like these! Both are super nifty and useful.

    • @CarlosToscanoOchoa
      @CarlosToscanoOchoa Před 3 lety

      @@poissonsumac7922 many thanks! I'll definitely take a look on that!

    • @poissonsumac7922
      @poissonsumac7922 Před 3 lety

      @@CarlosToscanoOchoa No problemo!

  • @SRADracer
    @SRADracer Před 3 lety

    We need more videos of him. He is so enthusiastic 😁

  • @bsharpmajorscale
    @bsharpmajorscale Před 3 lety +2

    By a viewer?! Dang. I can be inspired now to find a constant or invent a new arithmetic. :P On a smaller scale, I've made contributions to OEIS, and I probably wouldn't have known about it without Numberphile.
    I suppose it'd be silly to ask for a closed form of the equation...

  • @piguy314159
    @piguy314159 Před 3 lety +4

    If the Riemann hypothesis is true, would that give a way to compute that constant without having to know the primes?

    • @johanrichter2695
      @johanrichter2695 Před 3 lety +1

      No reason to think so.

    • @RJSRdg
      @RJSRdg Před 3 lety

      Wouldn't the bit at the end of the video give a way of calculating the constant to a large number of figures without knowing all the primes, then you can use it to calculate more primes and if necessary use those primes to calculate the figure to a greater degree of accuracy?

  • @IznbranahlGoose
    @IznbranahlGoose Před 3 lety +5

    This makes me wonder if it's possible to create a similar function and constant that generates *any* number sequence.

    • @alexpotts6520
      @alexpotts6520 Před 3 lety +1

      Just using the same formula and different starting constants, you can generate any monotonically increasing integer sequence, so long as the next term is always less than twice the previous one. (Which is something about the primes which has been known for a very long time.)

    • @sirplatinius4513
      @sirplatinius4513 Před 3 lety

      Inituitively yes, but only if the property fn < fn+1 < 2*fn holds for all n.

    • @IznbranahlGoose
      @IznbranahlGoose Před 3 lety

      Yeah.. I guess you can use this for those limited sequences -- but can you do it with any sequence in any order without the x2 limit?

    • @Quantris
      @Quantris Před 3 lety

      Yes, with certain conditions on how the sequence grows (different conditions could be obtained if one futzes with the recurrence formula: e.g. you could probably make it super-flexible by adding a tan function in there). I suggest thinking of this number as more an "encoding" of the sequence of primes rather than "generating" it (this is just a semantic distinction in the end). In that sense there's nothing too magical about it: it must exist as a constant because the sequence of primes is constant. Looking at its properties is certainly interesting though.

  • @ShajidHasan
    @ShajidHasan Před 3 lety

    I LOVE DR JAMES GRIME SOOOOOO MUCH

  • @just_the_drummer8830
    @just_the_drummer8830 Před 3 lety

    I just noticed, for the first time, the signed explanation of Graham's Number on brown paper, framed and hung on the wall. I love it.

  • @rlamacraft
    @rlamacraft Před 3 lety +4

    Wonder if there’s some interesting data encoding properties here. Being able to encode a very precise floating value as a series of integers

    • @thomasi.4981
      @thomasi.4981 Před 3 lety

      Oh, interesting. Most people wondered about the other way around. With regard to storing an arbitrarily large series of integers as a single floating point number, it's basically at best barely more efficient because the computational time of computing offsets the memory compactness benefits.
      For your idea though, I feel it could be valid. However, the restriction I believe is that any following number in the series can't be more than 2x as large as the previous, for such a thing to work. I'm not smart enough to confirm and test anything though, I've only grasped this a bit better by some comments.

    • @rlamacraft
      @rlamacraft Před 3 lety

      @@thomasi.4981 the reason I mention is that storing floating point value is notoriously difficult. Rational numbers can be stored as a pair of integers, but irrationals almost always end up with some rounding error no matter what base you use. I know expansion formulae are used for calculating very precise values of pi, e, etc, but I’m not sure if those techniques are general purpose. For applications where processing time is cheap but memory is expensive, and storing values using some technique like binary-coded decimal is therefore infeasible, I think this could be interesting. Obviously there’s no way to just cheat your way out of storing the same amount of information, it’s all about space versus time trade-offs

    • @thomasi.4981
      @thomasi.4981 Před 3 lety

      @@rlamacraft I was feeling that a series of integers would take more space than an arbitrarily large floating point number, but maybe I'm incorrect. Either way, a given system could keep whichever form it has an easier time with.

    • @therealax6
      @therealax6 Před 3 lety

      This is what we do every day. You can encode the fractional part of pi as the sequence 1, 4, 1, 5, 9, 2, 6, 5... this is literally what calculating a decimal expansion is.
      On the other hand, this is much more interesting when the sequence has a rule to generate it, of course. Rational numbers have trivial rules (1/2 and 1/3 can be encoded by 5, 0, 0, 0... and 3, 3, 3, 3..., both of which are very obvious to write down in closed form), but some irrational and even transcendental numbers can easily be encoded this way. There are many interesting ways of encoding irrational numbers as integer sequences other than decimal expansions (for instance, √2 and e both have a very nice encoding as a continued fraction), too.