Section 3.1.3 Due on October 7, 2011

1. What was the most difficult part of the reading for you?
I'm not sure that there was anything terribly 'difficult' about the reading, but what is making me nervous is the thought of keeping these different types of numbers and formulas memorized and separated in my mind. I mean, maybe it'll get better with time, especially if we discuss their differences in class, but for now I couldn't really tell you the difference between Mersenne numbers or Fermat Numbers. I know that I understand how perfect numbers from the other two, but remembering that crazy formula (when compared with the other two) makes me antsy.

2. What was the most interesting part of the reading for you?
Um... it was interesting to me that there are Mersenne/Fermat Numbers and Primes. I also thought that finding the GCD of two Mersenne numbers was interesting. Also, I'm interested (because I don't feel that the book really gave any insight in this section) in what the Fermat and Mersenne numbers have to do with anything. I mean, they even said in the book that they don't know if there are infinite primes in these sequences... so why are we even talking about them? Obviously there will be an answer now... but there isn't one now, and that makes me sad.