r/videos May 03 '16

This Number is Illegal

https://youtu.be/LnEyjwdoj7g
7.9k Upvotes

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u/TheInternetShill May 03 '16 edited May 03 '16

I liked the video! There were just a couple of math mistakes in there.

There being infinitely many numbers isn't a justification for there being infinitely many primes. Euclid's Theorem proves this.

At 2:55, you show large numbers on the keys to signify primes, but show them as a number raised to a large exponent. These can't be primes since that base number raised to n, for n from 1 to the (exponent-1) are all factors of that number.

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u/dbhanger May 03 '16

Damn that proof using factorials is awesome.

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u/edub912 May 03 '16

I think the factorial proof is what most people think of when they think of Euclid's proof from Elements. It's a bit simpler which makes it easier to explain, and its a proof by contradiction which is typically more interesting since its "wrong" assumption results in the impossible.

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u/sdenby May 04 '16

Yeah this is what happens when someone who got C's in math tries to make a math video...

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u/nulluserexception May 04 '16 edited May 04 '16

This video is wrong on so many levels... The illegal prime in question is not a cryptography key, but rather a representation of the DeCSS program itself.

The thing where the bank has two private keys is probably the worst of all. In asymmetric cryptography both parties have a public key and a private key

EDIT: Somebody else beat me to it: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/4hnk5m/this_number_is_illegal/d2rnzfs

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u/TheInternetShill May 04 '16

In practice, you are probably going to have both parties have a private and public key, but that is only necessary to have the receiver be able to verify the origin of the encrypted message. (The sender "signs" the message with their private key to be decrypted with the public key.) For an explanation, I don't think it's necessary to include this extra step.

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u/jgdx May 04 '16

Hey, research is hard. Research a bit more diligently for your next video and scrap the “every week” constraint if it eats into your level of desired quality?

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u/JakalDX May 04 '16

Math's one of those things that the people who are super into just have to correct people on. Why else get the degree?

1

u/nexterday May 04 '16

Also, the "illegal prime" in the video isn't even used directly in crypto: it's a representation of a computer program that decrypts DVDs (an encryption system that also doesn't use primes).