Post 61

Sixty-one is the 18th prime number--a twin prime with 59. My brother-in-law intends to teach his children to count to 1024 in binary on their fingers. I intend to waste my children's time by teaching them to count in prime factorizations: one, two, three, two squared, five, two times three, seven, two cubed, three squared, two times five (I love this!), eleven, two squared times three, thirteen, two times seven, three times five, two to the fourth, seventeen, two times three squared, nineteen, two squared times five (I just now decided to stop at thirty), three times seven, two times eleven, twenty three, two cubed times three, five squared, two times thirteen, three cubed, two squared times seven, twenty nine, two times three times five. Alright, that was fabulous. I just realized that thirty is the first number with three distinct prime factors. A good place to end. You see, this torture will give my children an intuition for the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic, and an appreciation of the primes, which obviously are less work than the composites. Anyway, we'll wait to see if this actually happens.

I wanted to tell a joke about how this all relates to my retirement planning, since my genius child is certain to solve some long-outstanding problem regarding primes, one with at least a million-dollar prize for its solution. I think funding my 403(b) may be a better idea.