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Counting composites with two strong liars

Scholarship:
Journal Article
Article
Peer-review

Open access

Abstract

The strong probable primality test is an important practical tool for discovering prime numbers. Its effectiveness derives from the following fact: For any odd composite number n, if a base a is chosen at random, the algorithm is unlikely to claim that n is prime. If this does happen we call a a liar. In 1986, Erdos and Pomerance computed the normal and average number of liars, over all n ≤ x. We continue this theme and use a variety of techniques to count n ≤ x with exactly two strong liars, those being the n for which the strong test is maximally effective. We evaluate this count asymptotically and give an improved algorithm to determine it exactly. We also provide asymptotic counts for the restricted case in which n has two prime factors, and for the n with exactly two Euler liars.

Scholarship

Output type

Scholarship:
Journal Article
Article
Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 3069-3089 (21 pages)

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Mathematics of Computation (Volume 84, Issue 296)

Publication milestones

  • Published - 2015

Publication status

Published - 2015

ISSN

0025-5718

Publication IDs

  • Scopus: 85000613382

Funding Details

This research supported by NSF: CCF-0635355 and ARO: W911NF9010439.
FundersFunding numbers
ARO
W911NF9010439
NSF
CCF-0635355