Saturday, September 27, 2008

13 Million-digit Mersenne Prime Discovered

I was an Applied Math major. In fact, my school only offered three different math majors: applied, computational, and operations research. None of that theoretical math.

So this story about a new Mersenne prime number's discovery doesn't excite me as much as it perhaps should, but the article is still fairly interesting.

And this number was discovered at my almost-Alma-Mater; I was offered admission but couldn't afford to go. I also didn't even pursue National Merit status or ROTC because I was so convinced I was going to be accepted to the Air Force Academy. Moral of the story: don't be arrogant, cover a few bases!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was UCLA hard to get into back then like today? How about the Air Force academy?

Darren said...

UCLA was hard to get into then, but I don't know how my chances then would compare to my chances today. Our academies have always been "elite" in that they accept only a small proportion of those who apply and are qualified.

I am *still* waiting for my rejection letter from Air Force!