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Simple formula makes prime numbers easy, but a million-dollar mystery remains
(www.scientificamerican.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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Does this mean this formula can calculate prime numbers without finding all smaller primes (as the Sieve of Erastothenes does)? Or is that somehow just implicitly done with all the factorials and sums and whatnot?
It's a Sieve of Eratosthsenes in disguise. It's pretty clever from what I remember, but I don't recall all the details.