do the Hierogrammates care about the megatherians?

Jason H · 22 May 2011, 23:40 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: beet31425 at gmail.com (Jason H)
Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 16:40:16 -0700
Subject: (urth) do the Hierogrammates *care* about the megatherians?
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    From: David Stockhoff<dstockhoff at verizon.net>

> Depends how you look at it. There are patterns among primes that I don't
> pretend to understand. But some primes may be rarer than others.
>
>

If I might briefly offer a mathematician's perspective... :)

No single prime number is "rarer" than any others. (Although as numbers get
larger, one encounters primes more and more rarely.)

I do think 17 has a significance over 13 and 19, but it's more psychological
than mathematical: 17 is probably the most "generic"-seeming number under
20. Forget the even numbers. (They're too obvious and well-behaved.) 11 is
one more than 10, and 19 is one less than 20; these are both "boundary"
numbers. We have 13, 15 and 17 left. 13 is fraught with superstitious
significance, of course, and 15 is a multiple of 5. That really leaves 17,
the most "random" or "generic" number under 20. Does this sound like
numerology? Yes, but I think it's really psychology.

Similarly, if you ask someone to pick a number from 1 to 10, they often pick
7.

The following blog entry is relevant and interesting:
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/02/is_17_the_most_random_number.php

-Jason
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