Talk:Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search

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…although seemingly useless…

That's not exactly NPOV, and besides the same can be said about almost any human activity. For the curious, here's Why do people find these primes?

[edit] Boone and Cooper AfD

Steven Boone and Curtis Cooper are now both on AfD, people here may want to comment. --Salix alba (talk) 17:26, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Results were that Curtis Cooper was notable, however Steven Boone is to be merged into this article. How much has Steven Boone contributed to this project? Which details on Steven Boone can be fairly added to the GIMPS article without giving priority to Steven Boone? John Vandenberg 04:53, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Since Boone is now a Dean and he wasn't when the merge decision was made, I'm not sure it should still apply. JoshuaZ 05:09, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I am just following up on an incomplete AfD I ran into. I'm happy for Steven Boone to stay -- all references that I can find mention Curtis Cooper and Steven Boone as equal participants in the two Mersenne primes that they have found. John Vandenberg 10:13, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
The merger decided at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Steven_Boone was actually performed literally the next minute. [1] 6 months later User:Sboonecms (sounds like the article subject, Steven Boone from Central Missouri State University) created Dr. Steven Boone. User:Daniel Case quickly moved the content to Steven Boone [2], effectively restoring the previously merged article with no new information. Sboonecms has added more info later. PrimeHunter 15:08, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Thank you again PrimeHunter; I jumped to the wrong conclusion. I've asked Daniel to provide some background on his part in the re-emergence of the article. John Vandenberg 01:06, 28 November 2006 (UTC)


Oh my. I think I was in the midst of doing some newpage patrol at the time. Without looking at the other edits I was doing at the time, I can't be sure. But I know I had some valid reason ... some other article at the time, some disambiugation that I think had made it necessary to recreate the page.
OK, yes. I had just done the usual newpage stuff [3] and then did the edit in question because we don't use professional titles in naming articles and at that time I was unaware of any of this history. All I found was the redirect and I had no way of knowing whether a separate article was or was not justified. It seemed like he might be notable enough to justify his own article and I did (and do not) know enough to be sure ... if it wasn't, I figured someone else would probably list it for deletion.
If this has caused any problems over here, I apologize. Had it been created as Steven Boone, as it is now, I might not have made the edit at all. Daniel Case 07:21, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
No drama Daniel; I'm only trying to check that there wasnt a good reason for what appears to be minor violation of WP:AUTO. I say minor as the original creation[4](9 September 2006) does not violate WP:CITE or WP:POV.
John Vandenberg 09:28, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I just wanted to explain the article history. I don't think Daniel did wrong by moving existing content to a better article name. I haven't worked on biographies and don't have an opinion on the current merge, except that mention of notable chemistry work by Boone would be nice if the article stays. I cannot evaluate or write about chemistry. PrimeHunter 00:59, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I asked Bduke for an opinion on the chemistry angle on Boone, and he doesnt think that it is notable based on the google scholar results. As a result, Unless someone can find sources that suggest notability, I think the Boone article needs to be deleted (again). John Vandenberg 03:05, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
"The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search at the University of Central Missouri by Curtis Cooper and Steven Boone" [6] (behaves oddly in my browser) says Curtis Cooper started running GIMPS software on his university's computers in 1997. L. Vincent Edmondson joined about 1999. Boone is mentioned two times:
"When Edmondson became sick and later passed away from brain cancer on June 10, 2003, Steven Boone stepped forward to help Cooper manage the GIMPS' effort at UCM"
"Credit for the discovery goes to Cooper, Boone, Woltman, Kurowski, et al."
Special:Whatlinkshere/Steven_Boone shows Boone is currently credited and linked for Mersenne prime discoveries in 6 other mainspace articles: Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, Mersenne prime, University of Central Missouri, Curtis Cooper, December 15, 2005. Steven Boone is also listed in List of mathematicians (B) (although he is a chemist who helped run math software), and in Boone as a chemistry professor. Prime number mentions Boone without a link. Largest known prime and several other articles mention the primes without mentioning Boone (but I think he has enough attention for helping to manage lucky runs with other peoples software). PrimeHunter 00:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
The link to Steven Boone in the article was a circular redirect from Steven Boone → Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. I removed the link in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search article and added the redirect page to {{RFD}} Toddstreat1 20:43, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "M" notation

The "M" notation in this article differs from that in most other articles on Mersenne primes. Here, the largest currently known prime (as of mid-2007), 232582657-1, is referred to as M32582657. However, most of what I have read about this number also identifies it as M44, the 44th currently known Mersenne prime.

If the definition at the beginning of the article Mersenne prime is followed, then the above number ought to be identified as either M32582657 or M(32582657) instead so as to avoid confusion with how Mersenne primes are identified; this should also apply to the other nine GIMPS-discovered primes so listed. Glenn L 07:31, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree. The notation should be changed here. PrimeHunter 16:19, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Great Internet Waste of Time

It would be helpful to justify why one of the largest computer clusters in the world is used for something as seemingly useless as finding Mersenne prime numbers. Folding@home, SETI@home and projects similar to those work towards discovering very useful information, whereas GIMPS is to serve these seven purposes, as pasted from http://primes.utm.edu/notes/faq/why.html:
1- Tradition - is tradition a good enough reason to waste the processing time of a virtual supercomputer?
2- For the by-products of the quest - understandable, yet those by-products that primes.utm.edu name dont seem worthy of a suprcomputer to me
3- People collect rare and beautiful items - see comment to 1
4- For the glory! - see comment to 1
5- To test the hardware - acceptable
6- To learn more about their distribution - what for?
7- For the money - yeah

I'm not attacking GIMPS, its just that the reasons presented don't convince me that there is no other more important use to which this processing cluster could be put to.
DrSlony (talk) 00:31, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

It's not the job of Wikipedia to justify things, although we can report with a neutral point of view what reliable sources have said about justification. Article talk pages are for discussing improvements to the article and not for general discussion of the subject of the article. If you want somebody to discuss GIMPS with then you can try http://mersenneforum.org/. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:59, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Right
DrSlony (talk) 13:34, 28 November 2007 (UTC)