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Prime number: A positive integer with exactly two positive divisors: itself and 1. The primes form an infinite sequence 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, ... Composite number: A positive integer that can be factored into a product of smaller positive integers. Every integer greater than one is either prime or composite.
The word integer comes from the Latin integer meaning "whole" or (literally) "untouched", from in ("not") plus tangere ("to touch"). "Entire" derives from the same origin via the French word entier, which means both entire and integer. [9] Historically the term was used for a number that was a multiple of 1, [10] [11] or to the whole part of a ...
Sometimes, the whole numbers are the natural numbers plus zero. In other cases, the whole numbers refer to all of the integers , including negative integers. [ 3 ] The counting numbers are another term for the natural numbers, particularly in primary school education, and are ambiguous as well although typically start at 1.
A short integer can represent a whole number that may take less storage, while having a smaller range, compared with a standard integer on the same machine. In C, it is denoted by short. It is required to be at least 16 bits, and is often smaller than a standard integer, but this is not required.
In mathematics, "rational" is often used as a noun abbreviating "rational number". The adjective rational sometimes means that the coefficients are rational numbers. For example, a rational point is a point with rational coordinates (i.e., a point whose coordinates are rational numbers); a rational matrix is a matrix of rational numbers; a rational polynomial may be a polynomial with rational ...
The division of two whole numbers does not necessarily result in a whole number. For example, 1 divided by 4 equals 1/4, which is neither even nor odd, since the concepts of even and odd apply only to integers. But when the quotient is an integer, it will be even if and only if the dividend has more factors of two than the divisor. [6]
A Lychrel number is a positive integer that never yields a palindromic number when subjected to the iterative process of being added to itself with digits reversed. [23] The question of whether there are any Lychrel numbers in base 10 is an open problem in recreational mathematics; the smallest candidate is 196. [24]
The set of rational numbers is not complete. For example, the sequence (1; 1.4; 1.41; 1.414; 1.4142; 1.41421; ...), where each term adds a digit of the decimal expansion of the positive square root of 2, is Cauchy but it does not converge to a rational number (in the real numbers, in contrast, it converges to the positive square root of 2).