So, as I’m waiting to get the cable sorted out, I’m fiddling with Mathematica. I ask it to, for example, factor 2500+1. Big number. 151 digits, which I won’t reproduce here. But, factored,
17 * 401 * 4001 * 61681 * 340801 * 1074001 * 2020001 * 2787601 * 22624001 * 3173389601 * 1481124532001 * 8877945148742945001146041439025147034098690503591013177336356694416517527310181938001
Simple enough. What’s interesting is the time it took to do it. Mathematica has a function, Timing[expr] which returns the time it takes to calculate the value of the expression expr. To factor 2500+1, according to the timing function, took 0.313 seconds.
All right, maybe not so interesting. But then let’s look at 2500-1.
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