Sums of digits and other tricks and factor()



My mistake.  I don't know very much about how factor works.

Rich

  From: Stavros Macrakis
  Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 5:35 PM
  To: Richard Hennessy
  Cc: Maxima List
  Subject: Re: [Maxima] Sums of digits and other tricks and factor()


  The slow part of factoring 8788797887776565343256785434546789796543568097876592 into its prime factors is not in 
finding the small factors 2^4*3*799760501, but the big ones 268141679222792839781*853815361070739347909.  See 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_factorization for more background.

               -s


  On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 5:29 PM, Richard Hennessy <rich.hennessy at verizon.net> wrote:

    I have been wondering why factor() is slow on factoring big exact numbers that are in the form y/x where x is a big 
even integer and y is an integer.  It is easy to tell that factor 8788797887776565343256785434546789796543568097876592 
is factorable by 2 just by looking at the last digit.





------------------------------------------------------------------------------


  _______________________________________________
  Maxima mailing list
  Maxima at math.utexas.edu
  http://www.math.utexas.edu/mailman/listinfo/maxima