NTNU's Onsager Lecture, by Terence Tao, part 3 of 7

[laustr]

Hey, I'm from Norway

[203132]

not too many even primes in the world....wtf?

understatment of the century?

[enronify]

A beautiful man

[angela1894]

He has a stuttering, stilted speech pattern

[gioaogionny]

terence tao rulez

[whotookmynickkokokai]

interesting.. but what is "mod p"? what operator is that?

[akmaltk96]

it's like the quotient of a division. For example: 7=(3*2) + (1). So, one have (1) as the quotient.  Therefore, one can write:

7 mod 3 = 1. Or: 7 mod 2 = 1.

[whotookmynickkokokai]

thanks.

[akmaltk96]

correction: it is incorrect when I said "it's like the quotient of a division.  The quotient is the result of a division. The "mod" operator yields the Remainder. So, for the case "7/3", the quotient is "2", and the remainder is "1".

[jonweintraub]

@akmaltk96 er you mean modulo or remainder...quotient is the other thingie.

[n080di]

Mod stands for ``modulo.'' What the other poster said is correct: x mod p is the remainder obtained when x is divided by p. Indeed, one can do mod p arithmetic. For example: Let's try mod 2 addition: 0+1 = 1; 1+1 = 0 mod 2; 2+1 = 1 mod 2; so on. This is studied in algebra and group theory, the basis for number theory.