[QUOTE=robert44444uk;141686]If you want polite then go to

[url]http://www.politetalk.com/forums/[/url]

I don't mind Bob's brusque way...I would rather have a post of his to one of my questions than not.[/QUOTE]I'm happy for you that you aren't bothered. I just don't think someone should feel like they can talk to people as Dr. Silverman often does that essentially would make many people feel like they should never have asked or even come to the board in the first place. Many times, I myself would have wanted to crawl in a hole and die after asking some things and getting the response some people have from him. He doesn't engender confidence or any positive feeling when he speaks the way he does. That is not helpful to anyone, if you ask me.

[QUOTE=Cruelty;141676]I don't think that right now (I mean before award for 10M digit prime is paid) is a proper time to discuss how this award should be distributed. The rules have been announced here [url]http://www.mersenne.org/prize.htm[/url] and no matter what your intentions are/were, this discussion looks to me as a form of putting some pressure on the lucky individual who probably found 10M digit prime...[/QUOTE]

I agree: No matter what comes out in the discussion if somebody who "blindly" runs someone else's code "deserves" a prize: The rules have been set, and by running the client, the rules are accepted. In short, the (discussed part of the) rules say "if somebody, who is running Prime95, discovers a prize-winning prime, the prize will be distributed in a certain way."

Now the prime is (presumably) discovered (I think the date of discovery is the moment when the client reports the prime to the server (or when somebody reads the server output first), and not when the discovery is verified. Please correct me if I am wrong). So I think it's too late to discuss how the prize for discovering a 10M-digit-prime is to be distributed. It is NOT too late to discuss how the prize for a future 100M-digit prize is to be distributed.

Yes, it is too late to change the rules for the $100,000 prize, even if they were changed right now. Assuming that someone found a qualifying prime (which seems to be the case), it would be very unfair to take the prize away from them, because they would have found the prime before the rules were changed. We shouldn't be making [I]ex post facto[/I] rules.

[QUOTE=S00113;141586]What would George's code have achieved if people didn't run it, blindly or not? What would searching for Mersenne primes using any software be like without GIMPS? I think GIMPS is the by far George's greatest achievement. Other people have written good software and searched for Mersenne primes as well, and GIMPS have coordinated them all.[/QUOTE]

It would have proceeded much more slowly. So what?
The actual numbers themselves [b]are not important[/b]. It doesn't
really matter whether we know 38 Mersenne primes, or 39, or....
It is the [b]techniques[/b] that are interesting, and what we learn
implementing them.

[QUOTE=Jwb52z;141684]I am responding to the sentences/phrases I have bolded.

1. How anyone could not take his harsh and belittling comments toward people personally is beyond me. He acts as if people are not worthy of his knowledge or help if they don't ask or understand or respond in a way that he requires beforehand.

2. I've always thought that politeness should be required on a message board and I don't usually find all of Dr. Silverman's responses polite when he speaks to people like they aren't smart enough to talk to him or ask a question unless they do it his way that he thinks is the only way to ask. He should hire a "go between" or an agent or a translator to speak for him, if you ask me.[/QUOTE]

Answer 2 comes directly from point 1: as you can't avoid taking it personally, then you think that Dr. Silvermann's answer is not polite. But he's only referring to the method, not to the man that uses it.

Luigi

[QUOTE=Jwb52z;141683]If he could converse in a more, and I think this is a good way to say it, low class or plebian way, he might not be so harsh sounding. In other words, we are emminantly aware of his beyond genius thinking ability, but he needs to come down to the level of the "idiots" on this board when explaining things and not expect his level of precision or explanation when talking to others. He's like a college professor trying to teach particle physics to a 2 year old who can't even tie his shoes yet.[/QUOTE]


Except that 2 year olds don't ask physics questions of college professors.
Yet in this forum we frequently get the equivalent. People with a low
level of knowledge and preparation posing poorly phrased questions to
the professor and expecting not only that the professor will make sense
of gibberish, but that the professor will explain in a way that makes
sense to the poster when the poster lacks the background to
understand an answer.

The post I am replying to is very interesting. I start a purely philosophical
discussion about who deserves the award, and it turns into a personal attack
on me.

"Bob is arrogant"
"Bob is rude"

etc.


Can you say "hypocrisy"??? Can you say "groupthink"?
You are doing the exact same thing that you claim I do.


When a 2-year old asks an adult a question, and the adult says "the
question makes no sense, ask when you are older", does the two year
old run off and say "you're rude!"??

I try to enforce some intellectual honesty and diligence.

The teacher said I lack the pre-requisites. Boo hoo. Boo hoo. The teacher is mean!
The teacher says I don't know enough to understand an answer. How
dare the teacher tell me that I don't know! Boo hoo. Boo hoo. The teacher is mean!
The teacher says I didn't do my homework first. Boo hoo. Boo hoo. The teacher is mean!
The teacher says that I am intellectually lazy. Boo hoo. Boo hoo. The teacher is mean!
The teacher says that I should have first tried to find the answer
myself . Boo hoo. Boo hoo. The teacher is mean!
The teacher says that what I wrote is [b]gibberish[/b]. Boo hoo. Boo hoo. The teacher is mean!
The teacher says that I didn't proofread my question.... Boo hoo. Boo hoo. The teacher is mean!

Boo hoo! Boo hoo! The teacher is mean. The teacher is rude.
The teacher is arrogant.

I wrote down some rules of what not to do in asking a question.
I assigned a point scale. One of those things was "don't invent
new terminology". Yet people [b]continue[/b] to ignore these rules.
(see the 'rare' primes thread)

Boo hoo. The teacher gave some rules regarding intellectual discourse
in math and I ignored them. The teacher criticized me. Boo hoo.
The teacher is mean.

I often get criticized for not "interpreting" someone's question.
It is said "others interpreted my question correctly, why didn't you?"
The answer is that I [b]can't be bothered[/b] trying to interpret a poorly
written question. What everyone fails to realize is that when someone
writes/publishes something in a public forum, it is the

[b]job of the AUTHOR[/b]

to make clear what is meant. It is not the job of the reader to
"interpret". Failure to proofread and failure to take the time to
clearly formulate a question is intellectual laziness and (IMO)
merits disdain.

[quote=Prime95;141592]
1) Bob is right. Does someone "deserve" a huge windfall for simply doing download, setup, and forget about it?
2) In 1999, when a 10M test took 2 years there was more rationale for the large award. When the GIMPS wavefront passed 10M it did become a raffle.
3) What about honoring the original EFF donor's wishes? If GIMPS took the $100K and kept it all or gave it to charity, then we've subverted the donor's desire to spur Internet collaboration.
4) The large prize does attract more CPUs, but at what cost? Do you really want the finders of Mersenne primes having absolutely no appreciation of what they've discovered?

This is a fine balancing act. Make your thoughts known. Hypothetically speaking, what would you propose for the $150K award that is probably 15 years away.[/quote]
Noone deserves to win the lottery, and noone who know anything about mathematics or have just a little sense of statistics will join GIMPS for the award. The odds here are worse than in most normal lotteries if you count in power costs as the price for a lottery ticket. Just like any other lottery the point of the money award must be to attract as many participants as possible who [I]don't[/I] know anything about mathematics. Noone are going to get a fair share or what they deserve, and I don't think many of us here care much about it.

Is it really important if the finder understands or appreciantes what he or she finds or not? Should we arrange a screening of participants, and only accept people found worthy?

For me the prospects of winning money is more of a problem than an incentive, because I mostly use machines in student labs at a university for crunching. In the highly unlikely event that I should get a price, I would give all of it to the institute who have kindly donated their spare CPU cycles for more than ten years, with a request that the money are forwarded to the student societies at the faculty. Realistforeningen, where Sophus Lie was a very active member [URL]http://books.google.no/books?id=ITMf4cZe5XkC&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=realistforeningen+sophus+lie&ots=DdhUoIU9Ar&sig=3XCyd22Lg1sZ-RdAQedGn2VlJgM[/URL], is 150 years old next year, and could use the money for their celebrations.

My suggestion for the next price is to keep 1/3 in a fund for running GIMPS, 1/3 for the programmer(s) and organizer(s) to fight over, and 1/3 for the lucky dicoverer(s) to decide over.

[quote=R.D. Silverman;141695]It would have proceeded much more slowly. So what?
The actual numbers themselves [B]are not important[/B]. It doesn't
really matter whether we know 38 Mersenne primes, or 39, or....
It is the [B]techniques[/B] that are interesting, and what we learn
implementing them.[/quote]
Some people also find the distribution of Mersenne primes interesting, if conjectures hold (e.g. [url]http://primes.utm.edu/mersenne/NewMersenneConjecture.html[/url]), if the exponent itself has special properties, etc. I guess it is a matter of what aspects of Mersenne primes you are interested in, and take the above as your personal opinion.

[QUOTE=S00113;141713]Some people also find the distribution of Mersenne primes interesting, I guess it is a matter of what aspects of Mersenne primes you are interested in, and take the above as your personal opinion.[/QUOTE]


I am one of those people. But finding a small sample of such primes
does ZILCH toward verifying those conjectures. Finding actual primes
can neither confirm nor reject those conjectures.

[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;141715]I am one of those people. But finding a small sample of such primes
does ZILCH toward verifying those conjectures. Finding actual primes
can neither confirm nor reject those conjectures.[/QUOTE]

Then why run GIMPS?

(this is not a flippant retort, I'm genuinely curious why you think this is worthwhile)

[QUOTE=Orgasmic Troll;141716]Then why run GIMPS?

(this is not a flippant retort, I'm genuinely curious why you think this is worthwhile)[/QUOTE]


In the beginning, to test algorithms and implementation of the same.
Now, however, it has become more or less just recreational.
Which is [b]fine[/b]!!! But I see no justification for awarding
$$$$ for just a recreational activity.

If the purpose of the money is to spur new research, then it
should be offered for (say) finding an IMPROVEMENT in the algorithm,
or perhaps a new insight into the theory of how M_p's are distributed,
etc.

Participating in GIMPS for recreation is fine. But then the money
becomes an anathema. It should be a labor of love, [b]IMO[/b].

I would not even feel a 'thrill of discovery', if I were to find a
record prime, [b]unless[/b] I were running my own code or (say)
testing a new method. Similarly, I would not feel particular pride
in a new record factorization [b]unless[/b] it were based on a new
algorithm or an improvement on an existing algorithm. Otherwise,
it is just a matter of throwing more CPU time at a known algorithm.

Oliver Atkin once called the Cunningham Project "Wagstaff's Stamp
Collection". He also said that it was a distraction from doing real
math. I participate because of factoring's relevance to RSA, because
I am constantly working on improving my code and looking for ways
to improve the algorithm, and because I promised Dick Lehmer that
I would push to finish the base 2 tables....

I see the GIMPS project in somewhat the same way... It is a stamp
collection; a recreation. I do not run GIMPS code because it is not
mine, and I have nothing to offer in the way of theoretical improvements.