Cryptography

Probabilistic Primality Testing

An exceedingly common question asked in coding interviews is to write a function, method, algorithm, whatever to determine if a number is prime. Prime numbers have a wide range of applications in computer science, particularly with regard to cryptography. The idea is that factoring large numbers into their prime factors is extremely difficult. “Because both the system’s privacy and the security of digital money depend on encryption, a breakthrough in mathematics or computer science that defeats the cryptographic system could be a disaster. The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be the development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers.” -Bill Gates, The Road Ahead