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From: trin0008@sable.ox.ac.uk (  Ranora Ryder)
Subject: Re: The Prime Numbers!!
Message-ID: <1994Nov12.145248.18099@inca.comlab.ox.ac.uk>
Organization: Oxford University Computing Service, 13 Banbury Rd, Oxford, UK
References: <3a0sbf$4h1@news.bu.edu>
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 94 14:52:47 GMT
Lines: 16

In article <3a0sbf$4h1@news.bu.edu>, Samuel Fauteck <sfauteck@bu.edu> wrote:
>I have an idea and am interested in the opinions/ideas of the group...  If I
>am way off-base I apologize ahead of time.  As everyone is aware, the problem
>of determining whether or not a number is prime is computationally very
>difficult (indeed - it is NP complete).  I originally thought of the idea of

Utter drivel. The problem of finding the primality of a number is NOT NP-C
and not NP either. Some recent algorithms have approached polynomial time very
closely although none have reached it. I seem to remember that one method only
misses P time by a factor of log log N.
The factoring problem is not proven to be in NP either. Some recent papers to 
do with so called 'quantum computing' suggests that the problem is more
tractable than previously thought.

	Ranora Ryder

