User talk:WillNess/Sieve of Eratosthenes

Adding a short description into lead, as the definition itself in the article's body is technical and long-winding. Also, Horsley much criticizes Nicomachus (calls his "performance" "wretched" and his table "ill-contrived", ascribing to him "far more laborious" method which we'd recognize today as trial division). He starts working right from odds and talks about "gradual extermination of the composite numbers from the arithmetical series 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, &c., infinitely continued". (!!) Will try to see what of that, and how, can be incorporated into the article. WillNess (talk) 12:51, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

H1772 also talks about "gradually expunging the composites". WillNess (talk) 18:21, 18 December 2011 (UTC)