• CAPSLOCKFTW
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    1 year ago

    Commonly primes are defined as natural numbers greater than 1 that have only trivial divisors. Your definition kinda works, but 1 can be infinitely many prime factors since every number has 1^n with n ∈ ℕ as a prime factor. And your definition is kinda misleading when generalising primes.

    • Chais@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Isn’t 1^n just 1? As in not a new number. I’d argue that 1*1==1*1*1. They’re not some subtly different ones. I agree that the concept of primes only becomes useful for natural numbers >1.
      How is my definition misleading?

      • CAPSLOCKFTW
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        1 year ago

        It is no new number, though you can add infinitely many ones to the prime factorisation if you want to. In general we don’t append 1 to the prime factorisation because it is trivial.

        Edit: I was wrong about this part

          • CAPSLOCKFTW
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            1 year ago

            Yeah, higher math is a total brainfuck :D You’re welcome.

            • Llewellyn
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              1 year ago

              I was never able to wrap my head around quaternions.

        • T0Keh@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          There is multiple things wrong here.

          1. 1 is not a prime number because it is a unit and hence by definition excluded from being a prime.

          2. You probably don’t mean units but identity elements:

          • A unit is an element that has a multiplicative inverse
          • An identity element is an element 1 such that 1x =x1 = x for all x in your ring

          There are more units in R than just 1, take for example -1(unless your ring has characteristic 2 in which case thi argument not always works; however for the case of real numbers this is not relevant). But there is always just one identity element, so there is at most one “1” in any ring. Indeed suppose you have two identities e,f. Then e = ef = f because e,f both are identities.

          1. The property “their prime factorisaton only contains trivial prime factors” is a circular definition as this requires knowledge about “being prime”. A prime (in Z) is normally defined as an irreducible element, i.e. p is a prime number if p is not a unit and p=ab implies that either a or b is a unit (which is exactly the property of only having the factors 1 and p itself (up to a unit)).

          2. (R,×) is not a ring (at least not in a way I am aware of) and not even a group (unless you exclude 0).

          3. What are those “general prime elements”? Do you mean prime elements in a ring (or irreducible elements?)? Or something completely different?

          • CAPSLOCKFTW
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            1 year ago

            You’re mostly right, i misremembered some stuff. My phone keyboard or my client were not capable of adding a small + to the R. With general prime elements I meant prime elements in a ring. But regarding 3.: Not all reducible elements are prime nor vice versa.

            • T0Keh@feddit.de
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              1 year ago

              That’s why I wrote prime number instead of prime element to not add more confusion. I know that in general prime and irreducible are not equivalent.