This is going to be a prime year, and by that I don\u2019t mean it\u2019s going to be first-rate (though I don\u2019t rule that out) \u2014 rather, 2011 is a prime number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since 2011 is a prime number, that means we can look forward to having several dates that consist solely of prime numbers. The first one will be 2\/2\/2011, and the last 11\/29\/2011. I leave it as an exercise to the student to determine how many of these dates will occur all year (translation: I\u2019m too lazy to figure it out myself, and I hope someone will post a comment with the answer). *<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The last prime number year was 2003, and the next one will be 2017. While searching for lists of primes on the Web, I discovered that 2011 and 2017 are so-called \u201csexy primes\u201d; that is, they differ by six (\u201csexy\u201d from the Latin \u201csex\u201d for six); if they differed by four, they would be cousin primes, and if by two, twin primes. Thus 2011 is a sexy prime number year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I suspect I am fascinated by prime number years because I was born in the middle of the largest gap in prime number years in the twentieth century (1951 to 1973). I had to wait more than a decade to live in a prime number year; I had a deprived childhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
* Here\u2019s the list of primes 31 and under: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31. Don\u2019t say I didn\u2019t help you out. Oh, all right, the answer is 52.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is going to be a prime year, and by that I don\u2019t mean it\u2019s going to be first-rate (though I don\u2019t rule that out) \u2014 rather, 2011 is a prime number. Since 2011 is a prime number, that means we can look forward to having several dates that consist solely of prime numbers. The … Continue reading “Happy prime new year”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[39],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-prime-number-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12804,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions\/12804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}