What is a Mersenne prime? I saw the post from a couple weeks ago about the finding of new Mersenne primes but have no idea what it is.
Also, I did very poorly on the midterm and was hoping that all of you did too. Nothing personal....
I looked on websites (including mersenne.org) and the following was the explanation given: A Mersenne prime is a Mersenne number, i.e., a number of the form $ M_n=2^n-1 $ that is prime. The first Mersenne primes are 3, 7, 31, 127 (corresponding to n = 2, 3, 5, 7). Searching for mersenne primes online gives a wealth of knowledge, but it is still a little confusing. -I think it is safe to say that the exam did not go well for the majority of the class. It would be interesting to see the statistics as far as average and high score.
