Factorizer 12.00

Overview

Studying prime numbers is one of the most interesting things mathematicians do, and computers have been of great help to this research. Even though software with more advanced and complex algorithms require significantly powerful computers to provide important results, this doesn’t mean that simpler tools are useless; Factorizer is a perfect example of that. It is a tool that can make a mathematician’s life easier, or more entertaining at least, since it can do a bunch of stuff regarding prime numbers. For example, it can factorize prime numbers up to 2,147,483,646, get factors of a single number, find the prime numbers in a range of numbers as well as find Fermat numbers and Mersenne numbers smaller than 2,147,483,647 (=2³¹-1).

Installation

You don’t have to be a mathematician to install this product. There are no advanced settings and you just have to follow a few simple instructions to get this program working. No additional 3^rd party software is included in the setup package, and neither do malicious items.

Supported operating systems are Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7 and 8.

Interface

The program’s interface might seem complicated at first, but as soon as you realize that most features on it are radio boxes you’ll see that it’s not hard to use. There are two text boxes on the top left, which are used for entering a range of numbers and below you can see a list of the functions supported by the program. The buttons on the lower part of the window denoting mathematical operations are used when you want to filter out numbers of a specified form, which you enter in the textboxes located below them. On the right hand-side of the window is the area where results are displayed as they are calculated.

Pros

Let’s take a look at the program’s functions one by one.

• Factor all numbers in range: This option will find the prime decomposition of a number (or of all numbers in a range).
• Display all factors of numbers: All factors of a number (or of all numbers in a range) will be found and displayed.
• Display primes only: If you want to find the prime numbers that exist in a specified range, then use this option.
• Display prime pairs only: This is similar to the above function, however here only prime pairs will be displayed (a pair of primes consists of two primes separated by a single number).
• Count primes only: If you just want to find how many primes exist in a range and not which they are, then use this. It’s faster as well.
• Plot integers with n prime factors: After specifying a range of numbers, this option will count the number of factors each number in that range has and then create a histogram. Check the screenshots on the left for an example.

The two other plot functions, “Plot EK (Erdös-Kac) values with 40/48/60/80/96/120/160/240 bins” and “Plot Palmen color frequencies” are a bit more complicated, so for an explanation of what they do please check out these links. If you’re not sure what Palmen colors are, visit this page.

Normally, all these functions display all found numbers, but if you want to exclude certain numbers then you can do so by using the filter feature. This way found numbers of a specified form will not be displayed with the rest of the results. The supported forms are: a*n + b, a*n - b, a/n + b, a/n - b, a^n + b and a^n - b. Using the filter feature you can find primes of a special form, like Sophie Germain primes, Fermat primes and Mersenne primes.

Cons

Absolutely no cons here.

Alternatives

There aren’t any alternative products really. You could say that Prime Number Calculator / Checker (free) resembles Factorizer up to some point since it can check if a given number is a prime and find prime numbers in a given range, but that’s about it.

Conclusion

It’s an awesome program that can be used to save you a lot of time and perhaps lead you to some very interesting conclusions.