

How to count digits in a prime number - georgecmu
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ten-most-popular-digits-in-the-new-prime-number-2013-2?op=1

======
lutusp
The linked article is possibly the worst misuse of a public forum I've ever
seen. It pretends to convey useful or interesting information, but it's a
shameless attempt to put advertising in front of the reader, over and over
again.

They could at least have revealed the statistical breakdown of the digits, or
pretended to be interested in the mathematical issues. But no -- there's no
usable information at all.

> _[As for methodology, the way we did it is we loaded the number into 10
> different browser tabs, and then Control+F'd each digit to get a count of
> how many times it occurred.]_

God, I hope this is a lame attempt at humor.

For the math, here's a quick Python breakdown of the 17,425,170 digits by
frequency of occurrence, compared to the expected mean (as a differential
percentage):

    
    
        dig  total      +-%   
        ------------------------
        0:  1739652  -0.164417
        1:  1743497  +0.056240
        2:  1739844  -0.153399
        3:  1745602  +0.177043
        4:  1743528  +0.058020
        5:  1739641  -0.165049
        6:  1742677  +0.009182
        7:  1743436  +0.052740
        8:  1743298  +0.044820
        9:  1743995  +0.084820

------
georgecmu
Interns are not just for coffee anymore.

 _Even though the text file came in at a whopping 25 megabytes, we actually
counted the number of instances in the newest identified Prime.

Coming in at a mighty 17,425,170 digits, it wasn't an easy task. Still, the
most popular number will definitely surprise you.

[As for methodology, the way we did it is we loaded the number into 10
different browser tabs, and then Control+F'd each digit to get a count of how
many times it occurred.]_

------
gus_massa
This could be an interesting subject (with more analysis), but the
visualization is horrible! There is not even a graph. I _had_ to make one:
<http://imgur.com/a/zqhUe>

