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From: sts@ssc-vax.UUCP (Stanley T Shebs)
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: Names for Prime Numbers
Message-ID: <430@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 17-Aug-83 21:44:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: ssc-vax.430
Posted: Wed Aug 17 21:44:45 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Aug-83 22:25:46 EDT
Organization: Boeing Aerospace, Seattle
Lines: 47

Once upon a time, when I was training to be a mathematician, a group of us
bright young students taking number theory discovered the names of the smaller
prime numbers.  Although we thought it a great achievement, the mathematical
world took no note, and the work was never published....

2  The Odd Prime - it's the only even prime, therefore is odd  QED

3  The True Prime - from Lewis Carroll: "If I tell you 3 times, it's true"

5  The Round Prime - critical digit when rounding off

7  The Lucky Prime - for obvious reasons

11 The Binary Prime - looks like a binary number

13 The Unlucky Prime - also obvious

17 The Random Prime - a very mystical number.  Said to been spoken by
		      the Yellow Pig at midsummer eve.  Also, it is the
		      only prime of the form 4 squared + 1

19 The Product Prime - from Kellogg's Product 19, dummy!

23 The Mysterious Prime - nobody seems to know anything about it

29 The Almost Middle-Aged Prime - you're over the hill at 30

31 The Arbitrary Prime - determined by unanimous unvote.  We needed an
			 arbitrary prime in case the prof asked for one,
			 and so had an election.  91 received the most
			 votes (well, it *looks* prime) and 3+4i the
			 next most.  However, 31 was the only candidate
			 to receive none at all

37 The Mysteriouser Prime - they know even less about this one

41 The Female Prime - the polynomial X**2 - x + 41 is prime for
		      integer values from 1 to 40

43 The Male Prime - they form a prime pair

The midsummer eve ritual commemorating the Yellow Pig is to gather
17 people around a table at 17:17:17 to eat bad food and ponder
the mysteries of lower mathematics...

					stan the leprechaun hacker
					ssc-vax!sts (soon utah-cs)