Talk:Prime number/Draft

Article Checklist for "Prime number/Draft"

Workgroup category or categories	Mathematics Workgroup [Categories OK]
Article status	Developing article: beyond a stub, but incomplete
Underlinked article?	No
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	Greg Woodhouse 07:08, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

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Primes and their generalizations

After some thought, I added a clarification to the introductory material. The reason is that while the rational primes (i.e., primes in $\mathbb {Z}$) are very important in cryptographic applications, other engineering applications (notably error detecting and correcting codes, where linear codes are very important) depend upon properties of primes and factorization in other rings (such as $\mathbb {F} _{2}[x]$). It may seem like a small thing, but I do want to be sure that the claims made in the introductory section are correct. Greg Woodhouse 05:41, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

Just delete this?

I noticed that someone removed the hyperlinks from the latter part of the introductory paragraph, and I agree that this was a good idea. To be honest, I wouldn't mind just deleting

Understanding properties of prime numbers and their generalizations is essential to modern cryptography, and to public key ciphers that are crucial to Internet commerce, wireless networks, telemedicine and, of course, military applications. Less well known is that other computer algorithms also depend on properties of prime numbers. These algorithms allow computers to run faster, computer networks to carry more data with a greater degree of reliability, and are basic to the operation of many consumer electronics devices, such as television sets, DVD players, GPS devices, and more. Life as we know it today would not be possible without an understanding of prime numbers.

I put it in there to provide some motivation for the study of prime numbers, but I'm not so sure I don't find it distracting (or just plain too long) without the hyperlinks. Greg Woodhouse 10:14, 5 April 2007 (CDT)