why do we need prime numbers?

Question

NEED HELP

Answer 1

Ummm... we don't necessarily "need" prime numbers for anything. Usually, when people ask this type of question, people come up with some answer like "we use it for engineering" or some other complicated discipline that uses it rigorously.

To be honest, prime numbers are nothing more than particular numbers that have only two factors, which are 1 and the prime number itself. Basically, Euclid decided that there are certain numbers that have this property and decided to call them "prime" around the year 300 B.C.

One use, however, is in public key cryptography, which is a form of keeping message secrecy. For a description of how this works or other properties of prime numbers themselves, refer to the following source links.

Cheers.

Answer 2

Prime numbers ARE NEEDED and provide a very important roll in today's electronic world.

The recent use of prime numbers in cryptography (the science of secret codes) has added new interest to the study of prime numbers and their distribution. For instance, it became important to know the relative frequency of prime numbers among very large numbers, say 100 to 200 digits. Since it is currently impossible to count the prime numbers in this range, an estimate such as given by the prime number theorem is important and guarantees that there plenty such primes. For instance, a 100-digit number is prime with probability 1/ ln(10^100) which is approximately 0.004. Thus, to obtain a 100-digit prime number, one uses a fast primality test to test random 100-digit numbers until a prime is found and this should succeed after a few hundred tries.

Answer 3

Consider this situation in it's most general setting : things made of primary components and the primary components cannot be broken down into parts of the same species.
Thus matter is composed of atoms, books are composed of pages, affairs are composed of rondezvous, and products are composed of primes. One would begin to suspect a
conspiracy here or perhaps a general principle at work.
Of course, i've never seen a general principle actually
doing any work but you know what i mean.
And that is this: Primes are a metaphysical necessity
What are the primes "under addition' ? Just the number 1
What are the primes which generate colors? Just yellow ,red, blue
And so on. And so in math we come to multiplication because people are tired of adding and we bump into
more primes in multiplication, we just can't escape them.!
Where do these little components come from and why do they have to be here? And this has to do with the basic
structure of reality (please pass the absinthe, just kidding)
Rather than hear my opinion, get the satisfaction of thinking about it and creating your personal solution.

Answer 4

We need prime numbers to generate codes to keep messages secret on the internet. It is possible to find a prime number that is 1000 digits long. It's possible to find another prime number, also "about" 1000 digits long. Multiply them together. The result is a number that is not prime, but no one can find the factor to factor them. Use that number as the secret of your code.

Also, prime numbers are fun. I urge you to see the DVD movie "Proof," in which the female protagonist has discovered a fundamental fact about prime numbers. The trouble is, it is suspected that her result is really the finding of her more famous methematician Dad. Only at the end does it become obvious that only she could have achieved this result.

Answer 5

To keep mathematicians busy trying to figure out the pattern, solve the Riemann Hypothesis, and win a million dollars.

Joking, joking. The million dollars is real, though.

In reality, ask anyone who deals with the programming behind Internet banking, purchasing, etc. Prime numbers are used to keep your credit card numbers safe from prying eyes.

Prime numbers are also used in nature. A certain type of cicada has developed a prime-length life cycle to help it avoid a particular predator.

Primes are a bit abstract, to be sure. But they are useful in many subtle ways.
For more about primes, I would recommend the site below.

Answer 6

This is the most ambigous question I can remeber. The only answers I have is that prime numbers are used as the basis off all modern electronic encryptions. Whoever has the highest random number has the best encryption so people make a lot of money designing algorithms to find bigger and bigger prime numbers

Answer 7

Frankly, if you want to use "29", neither 28 nor 30 will do the job you want.

If there are 29 sheep in the field, you need a prime number to descrbe how many are there.

If you're specific about the help you need I'll give it a go

Answer 8

For a long time, number theory in general, and the study of prime numbers in particular, was seen as the canonical example of pure mathematics, with no applications outside of the self-interest of studying the topic. In particular, number theorists such as British mathematician G. H. Hardy prided themselves on doing work that had absolutely no military significance.[4] However, this vision was shattered in the 1970s, when it was publicly announced that prime numbers could be used as the basis for the creation of public key cryptography algorithms. Prime numbers are also used for hash tables and pseudorandom number generators.

Some rotor machines were designed with a different number of pins on each rotor, with the number of pins on any one rotor either prime, or coprime to the number of pins on any other rotor. This helped generate the full cycle of possible rotor positions before repeating any position.

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Public-key cryptography
Main article: public key cryptography

Several public-key cryptography algorithms, such as RSA, are based on large prime numbers (that is, greater than 10100).

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Prime numbers in nature

Many numbers occur in nature, and inevitably some of these are prime. There are, however, relatively few examples of numbers that appear in nature because they are prime. For example, most starfish have 5 arms, and 5 is a prime number. However there is no evidence to suggest that starfish have 5 arms because 5 is a prime number. Indeed, some starfish have different numbers of arms. Echinaster luzonicus normally has six arms, Luidia senegalensis has nine arms, and Solaster endeca can have as many as twenty arms. Why the majority of starfish (and most other echinoderms) have five-fold symmetry remains a mystery.

One example of the use of prime numbers in nature is as an evolutionary strategy used by cicadas of the genus Magicicada.[5] These insects spend most of their lives as grubs underground. They only pupate and then emerge from their burrows after 13 or 17 years, at which point they fly about, breed, and then die after a few weeks at most. The logic for this is believed to be that the prime number intervals between emergences makes it very difficult for predators to evolve that could specialise as predators on Magicicadas.[6] If Magicicadas appeared at a non-prime number intervals, say every 12 years, then predators appearing every 2, 3, 4, 6, or 12 years would be sure to meet them. Over a 200-year period, average predator populations during hypothetical outbreaks of 14- and 15-year cicadas would be up to 2% higher than during outbreaks of 13- and 17-year cicadas.[7] Though small, this advantage appears to have been enough to drive natural selection in favour of a prime-numbered life-cycle for these insects.

Answer 9

It's not a matter of whether we need prime numbers or not.
Since they exist, what are we going to do with them - if anything?
Why do we need mountains?
Since they exist why not climb them?
Prime numbers used to be completely abstract
objects, now they are routinely used in encryption codes all over the internet.

Answer 10

Same reason we need ALL numbers...prime numbers just have some special properties that many people think is quite intriguing....