Delete comment from: Stevey's Blog Rants
I would put teaching/learning of prime-numbers up as one of the firstmost things to do. I'd like it to be taught before simplification of fractions, for example -- if you break the numerator and denominator into their prime factorization then simplifying the fraction becomes a trivial matter of removing what is in both numbers.
The point is to realize that the prime numbers are the atoms of integers. With this fundamental idea many areas of whole-number mathematics become transparent.
Mar 17, 2006, 9:18:00 PM
Posted to Math For Programmers