Why should I switch to Python?

[Michael Hudson]

warlock at eskimo.com (Jim Richardson) writes:

> Out of curiousity, how does one (mathematically) prove that?
> (if this turns out to be one of those 12' blackboards full of greek
> letters and funny squiggles, Ok, I cry uncle...)

It's not all that hard.  Write the prime numbers as p1,p2,p3,etc.
Suppose that this series stops at pn.  Then let P=p1*p2*...*pn+1.
This number is not a multiple of any of the pm, so either it is prime,
or it has a prime factor that is not in the list p1,p2,...,pn.  Either
way, pn cannot have been the highest prime number.

It's also possible to show that if a and n have no common factor, then
there are an infinte number of primes in the artihmetic progression
a+dn as d=0,1,2,3,4,..., but the proof is, umm, somewhat harder (ie. I
don't know it; I think it involves slinging Riemann zeta functions).

Cheers,
M.

-- 
well, take it from an old hand: the only reason it would be easier
to program in C is that you can't easily express complex  problems
in C, so you don't.                 -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp