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by OJFord
3753 days ago
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Still the case for the natural numbers (with 0 instead of 1). Though perhaps more obvious why you would choose one or the other there. Going through school I'd be told 1 was/not prime differently by different teachers. Always seemed pretty arbitrary to me; like 'They' ought just to decide! What we seem to be hearing here is that They had, just another classic case of this information taking 50 years to filter down the education system.. (I wonder how many planets they teach there as being in our solar system?) |
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Your comment got me to look up the number of objects considered planets over the years, this has ranged from 5-23. Data since 1543 is available here: https://dx.doi.org/10.1038%2Fscientificamerican0107-34
For fun I did a linear regression of year vs # planets and found that the while the slope was 1.8 planets/century, this was not significantly different from zero. The evidence appears to be consistent with a constant number of planets.