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| ``Re: Negative primes (seeking comment)''
by mathcam on 2005-10-18 19:30:35 |
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| | I think my train of thought was perhaps too limited in that last post. There is one major logistical reason why we should only include positive numbers in the principal definition of a prime number: Very many definitions and theorems would have to be (presumably slightly) re-worded to incorporate a definition of "prime number" that included the negative primes. For example, if -2 were a prime, it would no longer be true that there is a finite field of cardinality p for every prime number p. as there are no fields with -2 elements. I suspect it would be easy to come up with hundreds of other examples. |
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