Pitches and Prime Numbers?

I kind of wish this thread was locked. I don't want to be criticized any more for saying that primes are the biggest problem. Nevermind, OK? And yes, there is doubt that that equation I gave always generates a prime, because you can't really inductively prove things with primes. I sorely apologize for my ignorance having to do with math, and I hope that I'm not banned from the forum.

Originally Posted by Dan Gilbert

I kind of wish this thread was locked. I don't want to be criticized any more for saying that primes are the biggest problem. Nevermind, OK? And yes, there is doubt that that equation I gave always generates a prime, because you can't really inductively prove things with primes. I sorely apologize for my ignorance having to do with math, and I hope that I'm not banned from the forum.

Dan

Please do not worry about this. I was not criticizing you either. You obviously know some math, and most work in math today revolves around prime numbers. That is in algebra, geometry (which few work in today) and analysis. Prime numbers are a focal point in all aspects of math. Making codes and more importantly, breaking codes, is the largest realm of Math today and that is all prime numbers and abstract algebra.

All interesting stuff.

Ron

Originally Posted by rolifer

Dan

Please do not worry about this. I was not criticizing you either. You obviously know some math, and most work in math today revolves around prime numbers. That is in algebra, geometry (which few work in today) and analysis. Prime numbers are a focal point in all aspects of math. Making codes and more importantly, breaking codes, is the largest realm of Math today and that is all prime numbers and abstract algebra.

All interesting stuff.

Ron

Really? I never knew prime numbers came into play in my research of non-linear PDE and Chaos Dynamics. Please don't make absurd statements.

P versus NP
The Hodge Conjecture
The Poincaré Conjecture
The Riemann Hypothesis
Yang-Mills Existence and Mass Gap
Navier-Stokes Existence and Smoothness
The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture

These are consider to be the greatest problems in mathematics. Don't even try to pretend you even know what half of them really even mean. At best, most people only get a vague superficial idea, but notice only one really has anything to do with prime numbers, but that's only at a surface level. It's more important to prove RH for the purpose of complex analysis.

I get really tired when people say most work in math involves math. IT DOES NOT. It's utterly absurd to say such a thing. You can make your math involve prime numbers but it does not inherently make it so. For example, you can simply ask how many Euler circuits exist in xD plane, or ask how many twin prime can exist on a certain xD while making an Euler circuit.

I fail to see it's true importance in graph theory, modern algebra(excluding group theory), PDE, ODE, non-linear, chaos, non-euclidean geometry, study of manifolds, set theory, probability, stats. real analysis, complex analysis, measure theory, and many more.

Side note: I think it was Goldbach who proved no polynomial with integer coefficients can always produce a prime number. Beautiful proof, definitely a good read if you are bored.

That list with major maths problems is a complete ripoff off wikipedia

You could just take a prime number and add "Hz" next to it and make it into a frequency. And for frequencies below/above the audible range, you could just multiply it by two (i.e. raise it by an octave) until it's inside the range.


Although I'd find such a procedure a bit meaningless - primes are interesting but using primes just for the sake of using primes can be a bit silly. I used irrational numbers to derive the pitches (their decimal points, actually), and I used prime numbers to shape the form of the piece. The reason I used these two numbers is because a) the string instruments can produce a seemingly infinite stream of sound, so the infinity of irrational numbers fits their nature, and prime numbers are the opposite of irrational numbers in a way: primes are numbers which can't be represented as the multiple of two integer numbers (other than themselves and 1) whereas irrational numbers are numbers which can't be represented as the quotient of two integer numbers.

But that's a bit more specialised and thought for than just using primes with pitches.

But then again, you can do whatever you want, no one's restricting you. However, if you want to use primes in your music, then make sure that you know everything you need to know in order to use primes in your music (and if you don't know, then go find out just like other people have in the past) instead of asking other people about it, otherwise it will make you look like a fool, just like DOFTS showed

Originally Posted by jujimufu

That list with major maths problems is a complete ripoff off wikipedia

Actually it's a rip off of the millennium problems. I'm not sure why these problem sure are millennium problems. I guess Hilbert's speech was quite moving (oddly enough no one went to hear him). Oh well!

and I hope that I'm not banned from the forum.

Wha...?

...

Where do you come from (forum or real life) where they 'ban' you for "ignorance"...?

WTF?

Originally Posted by DOFTS

So you want to use numbers such as 2 3 5 7 9 etc to find a certain Hz?

Tsk, tsk. A mathematican speaking of 9 as a prime number?

Originally Posted by Dan Gilbert

What I mean by going from wavelength to pitch is like, if A above middle C is 440. And the A above that is 880. That's wavelength, isn't it?

If somebody already said it, I missed it: No, that's not wavelength, but frequency, i.e. the number of times the wave "passes your ear" per second. Wavelength would be the length of the wave in metres.

But here's the first 100 prime numbers (up to 541 Hz) as frequencies in a row: Click here to watch Prime-numbers-as-Frequencies I stopped at 100 because typing numbers is boring, but I don't think it would sound significantly different with higher numbers. And of course you won't hear anything the first few seconds as those prime numbers are in sub-audio range.

Thanks so much gardener! I really appreciate it.

And I was being sarcastic about being thrown off the forum for my sheer ignorance.

Oh thank christ for that.

Yawn