Wednesday, October 20, 2010

6.4, due on October 22

1. Just under the statement of the p-1 factoring algorithm, there is a sentence which says "By Fermat's theorem, ..., so p will occur in the greatest common divisor of b-1 and n. What does it mean for a number to occur in the greatest common divisor of two numbers? This doesn't make sense to me. Also, in class, maybe go over the explanation of this factoring algorithm a little slow. There are a lot of weird steps that I have a hard time following.

2. I liked the Fermat factorization method, perhaps because I actually understand it. Too bad it can't really be applied these days. It's cool that there are other factoring methods being developed. It makes me wonder if anybody will ever find a quick way to factor any given large integer.

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