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Pillai Sequence
The Pillai sequence is the sequence of integers that have a record number of terms in their greedy representations as sums of prime numbers (and one). It is named after Subbayya Sivasankaranarayana Pillai, who first defined it in 1930. It would follow from Goldbach's conjecture that every integer greater than one can be represented as a sum of at most three prime numbers. However, finding such a representation could involve solving instances of the subset sum problem, which is computationally difficult. Instead, Pillai considered the following simpler greedy algorithm for finding a representation of n as a sum of primes: choose the first prime in the sum to be the largest prime p that is at most n, and then recursively construct the remaining sum recursively for n-p. If this process reaches zero, it halts. And if it reaches one instead of zero, it must include one in the sum (even though it is not prime), and then halt. For instance, this algorithm represents 122 as 113 + 7 + 2, ev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Integer Sequence
In mathematics, an integer sequence is a sequence (i.e., an ordered list) of integers. An integer sequence may be specified ''explicitly'' by giving a formula for its ''n''th term, or ''implicitly'' by giving a relationship between its terms. For example, the sequence 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ... (the Fibonacci sequence) is formed by starting with 0 and 1 and then adding any two consecutive terms to obtain the next one: an implicit description. The sequence 0, 3, 8, 15, ... is formed according to the formula ''n''2 − 1 for the ''n''th term: an explicit definition. Alternatively, an integer sequence may be defined by a property which members of the sequence possess and other integers do not possess. For example, we can determine whether a given integer is a perfect number, even though we do not have a formula for the ''n''th perfect number. Examples Integer sequences that have their own name include: *Abundant numbers *Baum–Sweet sequence *Bell numbe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prime Number
A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only ways of writing it as a product, or , involve 5 itself. However, 4 is composite because it is a product (2 × 2) in which both numbers are smaller than 4. Primes are central in number theory because of the fundamental theorem of arithmetic: every natural number greater than 1 is either a prime itself or can be factorized as a product of primes that is unique up to their order. The property of being prime is called primality. A simple but slow method of checking the primality of a given number n, called trial division, tests whether n is a multiple of any integer between 2 and \sqrt. Faster algorithms include the Miller–Rabin primality test, which is fast but has a small chance of error, and the AKS primality test, which always pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subbayya Sivasankaranarayana Pillai
Subbayya Sivasankaranarayana Pillai (5 April 1901 – 31 August 1950) was an Indian mathematician specialising in number theory. His contribution to Waring's problem was described in 1950 by K. S. Chandrasekharan as "almost certainly his best piece of work and one of the very best achievements in Indian Mathematics since Ramanujan". Biography Subbayya Sivasankaranarayana Pillai was born to parents Subbayya Pillai and Gomati Ammal. His mother died a year after his birth and his father when Pillai was in his last year at school. Pillai did his intermediate course and B.Sc Mathematics in the Scott Christian College at Nagercoil and managed to earn a B.A. degree from Maharaja's college, Trivandrum. In 1927, Pillai was awarded a research fellowship at the University of Madras to work among professors K. Ananda Rau and Ramaswamy S. Vaidyanathaswamy. He was from 1929 to 1941 at Annamalai University where he worked as a lecturer. It was in Annamalai University that he did his maj ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Goldbach's Conjecture
Goldbach's conjecture is one of the oldest and best-known unsolved problems in number theory and all of mathematics. It states that every even natural number greater than 2 is the sum of two prime numbers. The conjecture has been shown to hold for all integers less than 4 × 1018, but remains unproven despite considerable effort. History On 7 June 1742, the German mathematician Christian Goldbach wrote a letter to Leonhard Euler (letter XLIII), in which he proposed the following conjecture: Goldbach was following the now-abandoned convention of considering 1 to be a prime number, so that a sum of units would indeed be a sum of primes. He then proposed a second conjecture in the margin of his letter, which implies the first: Euler replied in a letter dated 30 June 1742 and reminded Goldbach of an earlier conversation they had had (), in which Goldbach had remarked that the first of those two conjectures would follow from the statement This is in fact equivalent to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subset Sum Problem
The subset sum problem (SSP) is a decision problem in computer science. In its most general formulation, there is a multiset S of integers and a target-sum T, and the question is to decide whether any subset of the integers sum to precisely T''.'' The problem is known to be NP. Moreover, some restricted variants of it are NP-complete too, for example: * The variant in which all inputs are positive. * The variant in which inputs may be positive or negative, and T=0. For example, given the set \, the answer is ''yes'' because the subset \ sums to zero. * The variant in which all inputs are positive, and the target sum is exactly half the sum of all inputs, i.e., T = \frac(a_1+\dots+a_n) . This special case of SSP is known as the partition problem. SSP can also be regarded as an optimization problem: find a subset whose sum is at most ''T'', and subject to that, as close as possible to ''T''. It is NP-hard, but there are several algorithms that can solve it reasonably quickly in pra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greedy Algorithm
A greedy algorithm is any algorithm that follows the problem-solving heuristic of making the locally optimal choice at each stage. In many problems, a greedy strategy does not produce an optimal solution, but a greedy heuristic can yield locally optimal solutions that approximate a globally optimal solution in a reasonable amount of time. For example, a greedy strategy for the travelling salesman problem (which is of high computational complexity) is the following heuristic: "At each step of the journey, visit the nearest unvisited city." This heuristic does not intend to find the best solution, but it terminates in a reasonable number of steps; finding an optimal solution to such a complex problem typically requires unreasonably many steps. In mathematical optimization, greedy algorithms optimally solve combinatorial problems having the properties of matroids and give constant-factor approximations to optimization problems with the submodular structure. Specifics Greedy algorith ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prime Gap
A prime gap is the difference between two successive prime numbers. The ''n''-th prime gap, denoted ''g''''n'' or ''g''(''p''''n'') is the difference between the (''n'' + 1)-th and the ''n''-th prime numbers, i.e. :g_n = p_ - p_n.\ We have ''g''1 = 1, ''g''2 = ''g''3 = 2, and ''g''4 = 4. The sequence (''g''''n'') of prime gaps has been extensively studied; however, many questions and conjectures remain unanswered. The first 60 prime gaps are: :1, 2, 2, 4, 2, 4, 2, 4, 6, 2, 6, 4, 2, 4, 6, 6, 2, 6, 4, 2, 6, 4, 6, 8, 4, 2, 4, 2, 4, 14, 4, 6, 2, 10, 2, 6, 6, 4, 6, 6, 2, 10, 2, 4, 2, 12, 12, 4, 2, 4, 6, 2, 10, 6, 6, 6, 2, 6, 4, 2, ... . By the definition of ''g''''n'' every prime can be written as :p_ = 2 + \sum_^n g_i. Simple observations The first, smallest, and only odd prime gap is the gap of size 1 between 2, the only even prime number, and 3, the first odd prime. All other prime gaps are even. There is only one pair of consecutive gaps having length 2: the gaps ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prime Number Theorem
In mathematics, the prime number theorem (PNT) describes the asymptotic distribution of the prime numbers among the positive integers. It formalizes the intuitive idea that primes become less common as they become larger by precisely quantifying the rate at which this occurs. The theorem was proved independently by Jacques Hadamard and Charles Jean de la Vallée Poussin in 1896 using ideas introduced by Bernhard Riemann (in particular, the Riemann zeta function). The first such distribution found is , where is the prime-counting function (the number of primes less than or equal to ''N'') and is the natural logarithm of . This means that for large enough , the probability that a random integer not greater than is prime is very close to . Consequently, a random integer with at most digits (for large enough ) is about half as likely to be prime as a random integer with at most digits. For example, among the positive integers of at most 1000 digits, about one in 2300 is prime ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Integer Sequences
In mathematics, an integer sequence is a sequence (i.e., an ordered list) of integers. An integer sequence may be specified ''explicitly'' by giving a formula for its ''n''th term, or ''implicitly'' by giving a relationship between its terms. For example, the sequence 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ... (the Fibonacci sequence) is formed by starting with 0 and 1 and then adding any two consecutive terms to obtain the next one: an implicit description. The sequence 0, 3, 8, 15, ... is formed according to the formula ''n''2 − 1 for the ''n''th term: an explicit definition. Alternatively, an integer sequence may be defined by a property which members of the sequence possess and other integers do not possess. For example, we can determine whether a given integer is a perfect number, even though we do not have a formula for the ''n''th perfect number. Examples Integer sequences that have their own name include: *Abundant numbers *Baum–Sweet sequence *Bell numbe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
