[seqfan] Re: A051501

[T. D. Noe]

At 10:05 PM -0400 7/30/09, franktaw at netscape.net wrote:
>I have a couple of problems with
>http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/A051501
>I'm not sure how to fix them.
>
>First, the comment from T. D. Noe; specifically the statement that the
>largest known prime ... is only 2^32582657-1.  This statement is out of
>date; as far as I can tell, the largest known prime is currently
>2^43112609-1.  This could obviously be corrected; but, it will likely
>become out of date again.  I guess what is needed is a reference to a
>web site with the largest known primes.

I suggest changing "only" to "currently" in my comment.

>Second, the "Extension": "The next term is too large to display and in
>any case b is not known sufficiently accurately to compute it."  This
>suggests that one would compute more terms of the sequence by getting a
>sufficiently accurate value of b, and plugging it into the formula.  In
>fact, just the opposite is the case: one would get a more accurate
>value of b by determining the next term of the sequence, and working
>backwards to determine what value of b that corresponds to.  (Not that
>anyone is likely to do that anytime soon.)  I'm not sure how to reword
>this so that it is less misleading.

I suggest removing the extension and putting in a new comment saying how b
can be computed. And insert the correct value of b.

Tony