Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Its supposed to be true in every base. But of course in Binary its not true. Every prime in Binary ends in a 1; its followed by another prime that ends in a 1.



You can just increase the length of the suffix since that is equivalent to talking about the last digit in a power-of-two base. E.g. if the prime ends in 11 in binary then the following prime is less likely to end in 11, since this is equivalent to saying that a prime ending in 3 in quaternary is less likely to be followed by another prime ending in 3.


Not every prime, 10 is of course prime and ends in 0.


It is still useful to say "prime numbers don't end in 0, 2, 4, 5, or 8" just as it is useful to say "consecutive prime numbers in any base are less likely to be followed by a number with the same least-significant digit". There are special cases at the bottom for both statements.


Likewise in base ten, 2 and 5 are prime. But this is a statistical argument. So that's cute but not significant?


"100% of the base-2 primes ending in '0' are followed by a prime ending in '1'."




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: