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irregular primes
at a well-attended brunch on saturday, i asked everyone at the table what an irregular prime number is (i know that the first irregular prime is 37, but i don't know why). here's a link to the wiki article on the subject. i can't figure out what the fuck they're talking about. can anyone out there explain this to me in plain english?
some context: i asked about this, because i am teaching an excerpt from ralph ellison's invisible man at the moment--specifically the prologue and the first chapter (which is often anthologized as a stand-alone short story called "battle royal"). in the prologue, the narrator mentions twice that he has exactly 1369 lightbulbs in the "hole" he lives in. i was curious about the number, so i did some quick factoring and figured out that it is the square of 37; and that its only factors are 1, 37, and itself. i wiki'ed the number 37, and that's where i found out that it's the first irregular prime.
some context: i asked about this, because i am teaching an excerpt from ralph ellison's invisible man at the moment--specifically the prologue and the first chapter (which is often anthologized as a stand-alone short story called "battle royal"). in the prologue, the narrator mentions twice that he has exactly 1369 lightbulbs in the "hole" he lives in. i was curious about the number, so i did some quick factoring and figured out that it is the square of 37; and that its only factors are 1, 37, and itself. i wiki'ed the number 37, and that's where i found out that it's the first irregular prime.
caveat
there's at least a 50% chance that his response, if any, will be "go to the fucking library".