Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weinersmith for October 19, 2016
October 18, 2016
October 20, 2016
Transcript:
So, in the simple case, we can prove by induction that there is no largest number. What?! Ugh, I hate when God comes to class. Induction is an invalid form of proof. There is a largest number. It's called splorch. It just never comes up because it's so big. Then what's splorch plus one?! It's just splorch. It's maxed out. What about splorch minus one? That's called foofercorg All really big numbers have stupid names. Q.E.D. sigh Shouldn't you be hanging out with theology class or something? Those guys are weird.
Or, better, here’s the proof the way I learned it:Suppose there were a largest prime number. Call it N. Now consider N! + 1. Clearly, N! + 1 does not have any number between 1 and N as a divisor. This means that either a) N! + 1 is prime, or b) N! + 1 has a prime divisor greater than N. In either case, we obtain a contradiction. Thus, there is no largest prime number.
Here: http://everything2.com/title/Proof+that+there+is+no+largest+prime+number