Wolstenholme's Theorem - The Converse As A Conjecture

The Converse As A Conjecture

It is conjectured that if

when k=3, then n is prime. The conjecture can be understood by considering k = 1 and 2 as well as 3. When k = 1, Babbage's theorem implies that it holds for n = p2 for p an odd prime, while Wolstenholme's theorem implies that it holds for n = p3 for p > 3. When k = 2, it holds for n = p2 if p is a Wolstenholme prime. Only a few other composite values of n are known when k = 1, and none are known when k = 2, much less k = 3. Thus the conjecture is considered likely because Wolstenholme's congruence seems over-constrained and artificial for composite numbers. Moreover, if the congruence does hold for any particular n other than a prime or prime power, and any particular k, it does not imply that

Read more about this topic:  Wolstenholme's Theorem

Famous quotes containing the words converse and/or conjecture:

    I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once more only the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,—those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)