• Question: Is there a pattern to the prime numbers?

    Asked by clockwork18 to Edd on 22 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Edward Codling

      Edward Codling answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Hi clockwork18- a great question again!

      Lots of mathematicians are very inetrested in prime numbers. A prime number is one that can only be divided by itself and by 1 to give a whole number. For example, 7 is prime because it can only be divided by 1 and 7; but 8 is not a prime number as it can be divided by 1, 2, 4, and 8.

      There are not thought to be any patterns in the prime numbers in terms of a pattern that you could describe mathematically (they are thought to essentially be randomly distributed throughout the number line). However, people do find interesting arrangements of prime numbers that (visually) look like patterns.

      Prime numbers are very important for cryptography – used in your computer everyday and for things like credit cards. More details here: http://www.claymath.org/posters/primes/

      There is a very famous unproven theorem about the pattern in prime numbers known as the Riemann Hypothesis – many mathematicians are working on this at the moment trying to prove it! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis (it is very complicated so don’t worry abnout the details!)

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