Information theoryInformation theory is the mathematical study of the quantification, storage, and communication of information. The field was originally established by the works of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, in the 1920s, and Claude Shannon in the 1940s. The field, in applied mathematics, is at the intersection of probability theory, statistics, computer science, statistical mechanics, information engineering, and electrical engineering. A key measure in information theory is entropy.
MultiplicationMultiplication (often denoted by the cross symbol , by the mid-line dot operator , by juxtaposition, or, on computers, by an asterisk ) is one of the four elementary mathematical operations of arithmetic, with the other ones being addition, subtraction, and division. The result of a multiplication operation is called a product. The multiplication of whole numbers may be thought of as repeated addition; that is, the multiplication of two numbers is equivalent to adding as many copies of one of them, the multiplicand, as the quantity of the other one, the multiplier; both numbers can be referred to as factors.
Multiplicative orderIn number theory, given a positive integer n and an integer a coprime to n, the multiplicative order of a modulo n is the smallest positive integer k such that . In other words, the multiplicative order of a modulo n is the order of a in the multiplicative group of the units in the ring of the integers modulo n. The order of a modulo n is sometimes written as . The powers of 4 modulo 7 are as follows: The smallest positive integer k such that 4k ≡ 1 (mod 7) is 3, so the order of 4 (mod 7) is 3.
Computational number theoryIn mathematics and computer science, computational number theory, also known as algorithmic number theory, is the study of computational methods for investigating and solving problems in number theory and arithmetic geometry, including algorithms for primality testing and integer factorization, finding solutions to diophantine equations, and explicit methods in arithmetic geometry.
Eisenstein's criterionIn mathematics, Eisenstein's criterion gives a sufficient condition for a polynomial with integer coefficients to be irreducible over the rational numbers – that is, for it to not be factorizable into the product of non-constant polynomials with rational coefficients. This criterion is not applicable to all polynomials with integer coefficients that are irreducible over the rational numbers, but it does allow in certain important cases for irreducibility to be proved with very little effort.
Gauss's lemma (polynomials)In algebra, Gauss's lemma, named after Carl Friedrich Gauss, is a statement about polynomials over the integers, or, more generally, over a unique factorization domain (that is, a ring that has a unique factorization property similar to the fundamental theorem of arithmetic). Gauss's lemma underlies all the theory of factorization and greatest common divisors of such polynomials. Gauss's lemma asserts that the product of two primitive polynomials is primitive (a polynomial with integer coefficients is primitive if it has 1 as a greatest common divisor of its coefficients).
Euclid's theoremEuclid's theorem is a fundamental statement in number theory that asserts that there are infinitely many prime numbers. It was first proved by Euclid in his work Elements. There are several proofs of the theorem. Euclid offered a proof published in his work Elements (Book IX, Proposition 20), which is paraphrased here. Consider any finite list of prime numbers p1, p2, ..., pn. It will be shown that at least one additional prime number not in this list exists. Let P be the product of all the prime numbers in the list: P = p1p2.
Goldbach's conjectureGoldbach's conjecture is one of the oldest and best-known unsolved problems in number theory and all of mathematics. It states that every even natural number greater than 2 is the sum of two prime numbers. The conjecture has been shown to hold for all integers less than 4e18, but remains unproven despite considerable effort. On 7 June 1742, the German mathematician Christian Goldbach wrote a letter to Leonhard Euler (letter XLIII), in which he proposed the following conjecture: Goldbach was following the now-abandoned convention of considering 1 to be a prime number, so that a sum of units would indeed be a sum of primes.
