Good_Burning_Plastic comments on Talking Snakes: A Cautionary Tale - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (226)
There is a fairly trivial proof^ that every prime number except 3 can be written such that it ends in a 2 if the base in which it it written is correctly chosen.
For example, 11 (base 10) in base 3 is 102. 37 (base 10) in base 7 is 52. 101 (base 10) in base 3 is 10202.
Of course, the base has to always be odd.
^ Deliberately left as an exercise for the reader. It really is trivial, but it seems so obvious once it's known that I'm honestly curious how obvious it is (or isn't?) when it's not already known.
Took me several minutes, and I'm still not 100% sure my proof is correct.
Edit: The one I was thinking of was more complicated than needed. Nal vagrtre a terngre guna sbhe raqf jvgu gjb jura jevggra va onfr a zvahf gjb.
That was the proof that I thought of as well.
Yep, that's what I had.
More generally: Sbe nal vagrtre a terngre guna gjb gvzrf k, cvpx gur onfr (a zvahf k) gb jevgr a fhpu gung vg raqf va gur qvtvg k.