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I don't know Colin's logic, but my personal reasoning would be:

1. If this were true then it gives a simple, efficient, deterministic method to test for primes. (You can compute P_n modulo n efficiently using matrix exponentiation.)

2. If there was such a method I am sure I would have heard of it before - and people wouldn't bother using Miller-Rabin or the complicated deterministic primality method

3. Therefore there must be a flaw...



Actually, there is a polynomial algorithm for testing primality, the AKS primality test.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKS_primality_test

In essence, my reasoning was simply that primes don't behave like this. Any connection with addition-type stuff is spurious and doesn't go on forever.

Mind you, when I'd searched up to 10^5 and still hadn't found a counter-example I was starting to doubt my intuition. The first counter-example is when the sequence predicts that 521^2 is prime.

In fact, if p is prime then p divides k(p). I find that non-obvious, but do follow and believe the proof. Even so, I don't know it well enough to feel enlightened by it.

The work continues.




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