Monday, December 04, 2006

December 4, 2006: A Math Geek Could Identify This (Even With The Numbers Behind It Missing)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

vA lot of hugs and kisses???

hugs and kisses-T

Andy B. said...

Prime numbers?

EyeRytStuf said...

Ooo... you ARE a bit of a math geek! Do you recognize the method used to find them?

Andy B. said...

Ya got me there.

EyeRytStuf said...

Well, Andy gets major partial credit for working out the tough bit. The missing detail is that this is the Sieve of Eratosthenes. (I prounounce his name air-uh-toss-thuh-knees, but could be WAY off.) That would be the S.o.E. made famous (or would be, if I'd record it and it became famous) in the song I sometimes sing to the kids (to the tune of Bear Necessities):

The Sieve of Eratosthenes
The Sieve of Eratosthenes
Will help you when you need to know your primes.
The Sieve of Eratosthenes
The Sieve of Eratosthenes
The first four circles: cross out all their "times".

Also, I found a yellow dry-erase marker (it seriously just sorta showed up in my room), so I color-coded the X marks. Black for the neither prime nor composite number one. Red for the multiples of two, green for the multiples of three, blue for the multiples of five, and yellow for the multiples of seven.

Turn off the overhead projection of the numbers, and look at the pretty picture!

Good times.