James,

I saw your message about your algorithm for counting prime numbers. I
intended to read some of the background on this
topic and some of the preceding posts, but I don't know where to start
because there are literally thousands of posts between you and your
responders. It seems that you have an algorithm which works, but a lot
of the mathematicians on usenet feel that it is just a modified form
of earlier sieve algorithms or of Legendre's inclusion/exclusion
algorithm. Perhaps your work would get a better reception if it
followed a more traditional presentation format. You should discuss
the existing work in this area and show how your formula differs from
exisiting algorithms. Since you know that some people feel this is
just a form of Legendre's algorithm, you should especially address
that point. You
have to make it easier for other researchers to tell exactly what you
have done and how it fits into a larger context. Once you have written
such a document, you would be a long way towards an article you could
send to a journal for peer review. Or perhaps, you will find that
there are a lot of existing algorithms for counting prime numbers and
your approach might be true but not particularly interesting. In
addition, some of the responses to your posts indicate that there are
more efficient and faster algorithms for counting prime numbers. If
you write a summary report, you might make a comparison of run-time
for your formula and some of the formulas. (Even if your formula is
slower, it might still have academic interest). It seems that such an
approach would be more productive than trying to convince the usenet
audience by periodically sending them the same post. I can tell from
looking back over some of the history of these posts that, at first,
you received serious responses and serious criticisms, and then people
got tired and testy because they felt you weren't responding to their
sincere questions. Since then, these posts have degenerated into
accusations by you that the math community is scheming against you and
retorts by them that you are a crank. Rather than trying to sway a
handful of
mathematicians on usenet, who have stopped taking you seriously, why
don't you submit your findings to a journal or submit your algorithm
for a patent?

What do you think?