The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Chapter 19 Quotes
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Chapter 19 Quotes
How we cite the quotes:
Quote 1
Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them. (19.6)
Do you agree with this – is life very logical? Are the rules difficult to figure out? Or does this say more about Christopher than about life in general?
Quote 2
The rule for working out prime numbers is really simple, but no one has ever worked out a simple formula for telling you whether a very big number is a prime number or what the next one will be. If a number is really, really big, it can take a computer years to work out whether it is a prime number. (19.6)
What's wrong with this mathematical picture? We thought Christopher was all about logic and order, so shouldn't he hate prime numbers? They're just about the least-orderly things around. Even computers can't predict where they're going to show up! What makes prime numbers different, such that they don't make him uneasy like other unpredictable things?