= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
ChristianKl comments on Open thread for December 17-23, 2013 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (301)
Whether someone will bother really depends on why someone wants to know. You can simple type "primefactors of 9876216987326578968732678968432126877" into Wolfram Alpha and get your answer. It's not harder than typing "primefactors of 4678946132165798721321" into Wolfram Alpha
I don't know if this was due to an edit, but the second number in Khoth's post is far larger than 9876216987326578968732678968432126877, and indeed Alpha won't factor it.
To be honest I'm sort of surprised that Alpha is happy to factor 4678946132165798721321, I'd have thought that that was already too large.
The reason nobody will bother is that it's just one 200 digit number among another 10^200 similar numbers. Even if you care about one of them enough to ask Wolfram Alpha, it's vanishingly unlikely to be that particular one.
Technically it is harder, since there are more digits; apart from the additional work involved this also makes more opportunities for mistakes. In addition, of course, the computer at the other end is going to have to do more work.