Thursday, June 18, 2015

Real-life application of Prime Numbers

While researching about practical applications of everyday math concepts, one topic that really fascinated me was that of use of prime numbers. Did you know every time you use your credit card to shop online, banks use prime numbers to keep that transaction safe? I was perplexed at first as to see how a prime number can help me save my credit card information from a malicious person over the internet. Before we dive deep into how prime numbers are used to keep banking transactions safe, let’s look at some key facts about prime numbers themselves.
-          A prime number is a natural number greater than one that has no positive divisors other than one and itself. A natural number greater than one that is not a prime number is called a composite number. For example, 2 is a prime number since it can be divided by 1 and itself. 4, for example, is a composite number as it is divisible by 1, 2 and 4.
-          Any whole number bigger than 1, can be created by multiplying prime numbers together. For example, 6, is a result of multiplication of 2 and 3.
Now let us look at this video and see how banks use these properties of prime numbers to keep our credit cards safe!
 
Incredible, isn't it?
 

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