August 11, 2004

Linguists and prime numbers

Adding to the ancient and honorable category of "all odd numbers are prime" jokes, David Mortensen posts a link to a version featuring subtypes of linguists. Those not familiar with the field may need to take a linguist to lunch in order to get an explanation...

Update: Dave Long emailed to point out that according to Google, some odd numbers are more (widely regarded as) prime than others:

proposition (ghits)
----------- -------
3 is prime  (937)
5 is prime  (740)
7 is prime  (709)
9 is prime  (443)
11 is prime (663)

]

Posted by Mark Liberman at August 11, 2004 10:43 AM