M44 poster.

[jinydu]

Originally Posted by Perfectly Scientific Website

For years Perfectly Scientific Inc. has been producing high quality posters of the largest currently known explicit prime number. Each poster is printed on thick glossy paper and measures 29 inches by 40 inches **. Framed and unframed posters dating back to June of 1999 are available for purchase. Prices vary, as each new prime tests the limits of the technology necessary to print these high-resolution posters.

Apparently, all of the Perfectly Scientific posters are the same size. Have they been steadily decreasing the font size?

[ATH]

Humm. Or choose the font size so that all digits fill 2 posters. But that would double the (already horrible) price !!

Perhaps 2 posters won't be much more expensive than one since the font could be bigger, which seems to be an important price factor.


But I like ewmayer's idea to have a fixed font size and let posters "grow" as numbers get bigger.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by jinydu

Apparently, all of the Perfectly Scientific posters are the same size. Have they been steadily decreasing the font size?

For the first few posters (at least through M6972593, which is the last one I have a copy of - I bailed when the font was shrunk for the later primes) they used the same (or at very least very similar) fonts and let the poster grow. But at that old font size, M6972593 was the size of a large poster, so apparently at that point Richard decided to start shrinking the font size so as to keep the poster within a reasonable single-panel size.

I doubt he's following this thread, but I sent him my suggestion before posting it here. Might be nice to do a poll and get the weight of some vote numbers behind the fixed-font (or whatever - I admit being a bit biased here ;)) suggestion, then at some point I could send him a link to the poll results. (It would be even better if people who vote a certain way commited to also buying a poster in that format, but I suppose that's asking a bit much as a pollster.)

[jinydu]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

I doubt he's following this thread

Perhaps we could start by sending him a link to this thread?

[T.Rex]

I've bought several PSI posters. Now I only put one poster in my office: M43. If I put a second one, and if I do not remember which one is M43, I'll have to read the small lines at the bottom when someone asks me !
Keep the digits if you want. But make the poster more "fancy" (I think it is what I mean to say, but my dictionnary is in my son's bedroom, too far to check), more pleasant and self-explanatory: add the words Mersenne, GIMPS, Lucas, Lehmer, the Mq=2^q-1 formula in large with q="the exponent of the mersenne prime", the LLT theorem, and so on, please.
Tony

[Mini-Geek]

Originally Posted by T.Rex

Since it is sad to need to read the notes at the bottom of the poster in order to know which number it is, I suggest 3 proposals :

1) Print only a reduced number of all the digits around the name (M44) and exact formula (2^32....-1) of the number.
2) CHANGE THE BASE !
[snip]
3) Forget the digits and print:
[snip]
This way, people will stop asking me why I've bought a gray poster and if it is modern art !!

I think that it defeats the reason of the poster to make it not have the full number, in base 10. I suggest, along with what I think someone else said in this thread, that we fix the font size and make the poster bigger for each prime.

And as to the "modern art" thing, tell them yes, it's Mersenne prime-based art.

[S485122]

Originally Posted by Phil MjX

binary is an excellent suggestion : one black dot for a one, a white for a zero and you obtain a BLACK poster whose area is exactly related to the mersenne number (depending on your printer dpi's)....

And then ask the people doing the print to print the dots in a PERFECT rectangle ;-)

[drew]

Originally Posted by Jacob Visser

And then ask the people doing the print to print the dots in a PERFECT rectangle ;-)

Only numbers that are prime cannot be reduced to a rectangle.

[retina]

Originally Posted by drew

Only numbers that are prime cannot be reduced to a rectangle.

I think you meant rectangles with both sides greater than 1 of course.

[T.Rex]

Richard Crandall said on primenet mailing list:

Colleagues: The newest prime's poster is now available at www.perfsci.com

Incidentally, the printing technology is truly pressed (no pun intended) at this prime size. This will likely be the very last prime printing done this way.

There have been several clever suggestions from you, for future printing issues. Ideas such as allowing arbitrary poster width, even "dead sea scrolls" of a primes, etc. are all
welcome. There is another new idea which is that PSI starts making silicon chips, and would offer an integrated museum-quality microscope display. One could go up to a billion digits that way, but of course such a "chip poster" would cost $100s.

Once again I apologize out of hand for the high price of all the current posters including the newest. The prime-poster business is tough going, is the only defense!

R. E. Crandall

Now we need a "power buy", I guess !

Tony

[Uncwilly]

A co-worker of mine has a high end ink jet printer (it cost him ~2.700 Euro) that can handle paper (or even canvas) in the neighborhood of 110-120 cm wide and any length needed. I'll ask him how much it would cost to print a poster of 1-point.