Who is adding all these N^a-1?

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by wblipp

Maybe. But every few years somebody manages to come up with something new enough and interesting enough to say about Odd Perfect Numbers that they have a publishable paper - there have been three or four since I started co-ordinating the factorization efforts. Most OPN papers rely upon factor chains for part of the argument.

The actual numbers are *irrelevant*. The "argument" lies in the
mathematical techniques.

So all in all, it doesn't strike me as particularly delusional to be thinking that in the next few years somebody will want OPN factors for another publishable paper.

You ARE deluded. There is nothing publishable in *just* the factorizations,
or even the use of the factorizations to extend the lower bound UNLESS there is some new mathematics that goes along with it.

A paper that says "here are some factorizations. We used
already published technques to extend the lower bound" is NOT
publishable, nor is it of interest to the mathematical community.

What is publishable is the mathematics.

[Batalov]

Let's not recur into the "of course it is publishable" trap (and by referencing Tom's message I am not arguing with Tom: his is just a good summation of the subject). Everyone will just say what they said a year ago, and a year before that, and ... etc. We could all save some space.

The previous great story was "of course publishable" and by now it is indeed "of course published".

[Antonio]

Originally Posted by chris2be8

It would help if a few people ran yafu.pl (from http://mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=16359&page=6 post 65). It won't run out of work for a few days!

Chris

There is a slight bug in the code above. If it fails to fetch a composite it waits 60 seconds and then tries to process the composite it didn't fetch!
This then confuses YAFU somewhat, and when it happened to me the code ended up in an error loop.
I have corrected this by adding an else clause to "if (!defined $contents....."

The corrected version of the Perl script is supplied below.

use warnings;
use strict;
use LWP::Simple;
 while(1){
    print "get composites\n";
    my $rand=int(rand(100));
        my $mindig=70;
        my $contents = get("http://factorization.ath.cx/listtype...and&download=1");
     if (!defined $contents or $contents =~ /[a-z]/ ){
        print "$contents\n";
        print "Error, no composites fetched\n";
        sleep(60);
    }else {
    
       my @composites=split(/\s/, $contents);
       foreach my $composite (@composites) {
           print "Factoring ".length($composite)." digits: $composite\n";
           my @results;
           open(YAFU, "yafu factor($composite) -p|") or die "Couldn't start yafu!";
           while (<YAFU>) {
                   print "$_";
                   chomp;
               if (/^[CP].*? = (\d+)/) {
                 push( @results, $1 );
               print "*****\n";
              }
           }
           close(YAFU);
        
           if ( scalar(@results) > 0 ) {
              print "===========================================================================\n";
              print "report factors\n";
              my $url="http://factorization.ath.cx/report.php?report=".$composite."%3D".join('*',@results);
              #print "$url\n";
              $contents=get($url);
              #print "$contents\n";
               my $nofactors     = ($contents =~ s/Does not divide//g);
              my $already_known = ($contents =~ s/Factor already known//g);
              my $added         = ($contents =~ s/Factor added//g);
              my $small         = ($contents =~ s/Small factor//g);
               print "\tNew factors added:        " . ($added         ? $added         : 0) . "\n";
              print "\tFactors already known:    " . ($already_known ? $already_known : 0) . "\n";
              print "\tSmall factors:            " . ($small         ? $small         : 0) . "\n";
              print "\tErrors (does not divide): " . ($nofactors     ? $nofactors     : 0) . "\n";
              print "===========================================================================\n\n";
          }else {
              print "Error, no result found\n";
              sleep(60);
          }
      }
   }  
}
die;

[wblipp]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

The actual numbers are *irrelevant*. The "argument" lies in the mathematical techniques.

You ARE deluded. There is nothing publishable in *just* the factorizations, or even the use of the factorizations to extend the lower bound UNLESS there is some new mathematics that goes along with it.

A paper that says "here are some factorizations. We used already published technques to extend the lower bound" is NOT publishable, nor is it of interest to the mathematical community.

What is publishable is the mathematics.

We are in violent agreement!

Although *irrelevant* is a particular spin that it is accurate but incomplete. Richard Brent's 1989 lower bound paper, and every one since then, has required previously unknown factorizations. Although necessary, it is *obviously* true that it wasn't the factorizations that made them publishable. I'm not under the impression the I am doing mathematics - that would indeed be delusional. I'm under the impression that other people really doing mathematics will find these useful at some future date. It's worked out that way at least three times already.

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by wblipp

[B] I'm under the impression that other people really doing mathematics will find these useful at some future date. .

One can't possibly know what numerical results will be needed in the future
until the math becomes known. The former depends on the latter.

[chris2be8]

You can't be sure they will not be needed in the future unless you know all the maths that will be discovered in this area. So they are worth making available on the internet even if not formally published.

Chris

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by chris2be8

You can't be sure they will not be needed in the future unless you know all the maths that will be discovered in this area. So they are worth making available on the internet even if not formally published.

Chris

A Rationalization.

[wblipp]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

One can't possibly know what numerical results will be needed in the future until the math becomes known. The former depends on the latter.

With the emphasis on "know," we are again in violent agreement with another accurate but incomplete statement. Pace's papers required some factorizations that were not knowable in advance. However, even these papers also required some extensions of Richard Brent's 1988 factor chains to complete the new proofs. It's possible the next paper will break this tradition - hence your statement is accurate. The last three continued this tradition, though.

[c10ck3r]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

You ARE deluded. There is nothing publishable in *just* the factorizations,
or even the use of the factorizations to extend the lower bound UNLESS there is some new mathematics that goes along with it.

A paper that says "here are some factorizations. We used
already published techniques to extend the lower bound" is NOT
publishable, nor is it of interest to the mathematical community.

What is publishable is the mathematics.

Ign'nt bystander talking: I like knowing where the lower bound stands and increasing it periodically, whether through math (which I'll let smart people like you handle :P ), or thru brute force. This is the same reason I like GIMPS: I get to see progress being made towards finding the next prime (by eliminating lower candidates), and milestones make for a warm, fuzzy feeling...

Do I think factorDB is the right repository for wbilpp's factors? Not really.
Do I think the unannounced dump onto factorDB was in good taste? Probably not.
Did it get people talking about OPN and making (some) progress on raising the lower bound through current methods? Probably.

Note: I say probably for the last one because I'm not entirely sure if the factors we've found are actually useful/will actually be used...

[wblipp]

Originally Posted by c10ck3r

Do I think the unannounced dump onto factorDB was in good taste? Probably not.

Definitely done BADLY. I hadn't realized how much unfactored smallish stuff would be left after even after all the factors were in; I was thinking it would mostly clear out when the tail caught up. I've changed my whole philosophy about updating factordb to avoid such a mess in the future.