Category talk:Prime numbers

Not for individual numbers

Category:Prime numbers is not for individual small numbers which happen to be prime. If a large number is only notable and has an article because it's a prime number then it may belong here. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:40, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Soft or weak Primes

Category:Prime numbers I'm missing an Article about soft or weak Primes. The corresponding Page in the German wiki is:[1]David Bruchmann (talk)10:40, 16 Februar 2011 (CET)

The English Wikipedia does not have such an article but making it is a good idea. It's listed at Wikipedia:Missing science topics/Maths30#Wea and a row at User:CRGreathouse/Tables of special primes#Base-dependent primes. The first external link in the German article should be updated to http://people.missouristate.edu/lesreid/POW12.html. The German article says "Über die Endlichkeit ihrer Menge ist bisher nichts bekannt." I think this claims it is unknown whether there are infinitely many, but this is not true. Terence Tao proves the infinitude of weakly primes in any base in [2], and says Erdős had previously established it for base 10. By the way, I'm Jens Kruse Andersen mentioned at the end of the introduction in Tao's paper. At [3] I found the titanic weakly prime (17×10¹⁰⁰⁰−17)/99+21686652 which I think is the largest known weakly prime. I may make an article Weakly prime within a day (and try not break WP:COI). It would belong in Category:Classes of prime numbers. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:54, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I think it's probably a good idea to have such a page. I don't like the idea of putting it at Weakly prime which is an adjective, contrary to our Style Guide. Weak prime or Weakly prime number would be fine. CRGreathouse (t | c) 06:48, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I have created Weakly prime number and redirected Weakly prime. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:32, 18 February 2011 (UTC)