Re: Perfect Number
Matthew, on host 62.30.192.1
Monday, September 3, 2001, at 04:16:12
Re: Perfect Number posted by wintermute on Monday, September 3, 2001, at 02:55:53:
> And how do you calculate a perfect number, anyway? I can't believe that it would be a matter of checking every possible number for perfectness? That would be way too time-consuming. >
Any perfect number is of the form
(2^(p-1))(2^p - 1)
if 2^p - 1 is a prime. So any Mersenne prime, e.g.
2^3021377 - 1,
will give a perfect number
2^3021376(2^3021377 - 1).
As for evaluating those powers of two, that's a different matter.
Matthew
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