Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Creepy integer

Well, new year arrived and people still doing their best to keep up with new year's resolutions. Like some of us I got back to coding. It is getting busier lately. Seems like everyone finally exiting that seemingly endless loop of celebrations and business activity is back to its normal (why unemployment is growing in BC is a different matter though).

One question a programmer, mathematician (or numerologist for that matter) might ask in this year is what's the deal with the number of 2011? Does 2011 as a number possess any properties worth noting? Well, turns out it does. There is a remarkable property that number has. I discussed that property with several people (none of them programmers) and many of them find it amusing, even amazing and all of them think it is utterly creepy at the same time.

The number of 2011 is the prime one. That's it, there is no divisors of it except for 1 and itself, 2011. Not only that - it is also sum of 11 other primes numbers. Curious detail about those 11 is that all of them are consecutive ones. And finally creepiest part - one of them is 211!

Here we go:

2011=157+163+167+173+179+181+191+193+197+199+211

Chances are lots of people might find this fact significant enough to contemplate on it and even take it into consideration while planning different events for the current year. Next prime is in six years period, in 2017. But arithmetical properties of 2017 may be overshadowed by another fact - it is 100 years since Russian revolution took place and changed the whole world so profoundly. Whether or not people would think of it as of something creepy too is yet to be seen.

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