München Primzahl Theorie Konferenz
Dezember 7, 2001

We met at 7pm (Munich time) for dinner and continued consuming beer while waiting for those in California to catch up the time zone difference. We discussed many things, both Mersenne and non-Mersenne. Alex tried to calculate ln(750000) with only pen, paper and beer and came up with an answer of "about 14" and was disappointed later to find out it was actually 13.5278... which Steve thought was not so bad. We discussed the observation (not a conjecture) that so far no two consecutive gaps between Mersenne primes (in terms of exponent ratio) were greater than two, and whether the sequence was random, pseudo-random, or chaotic. We don't remember much else of what was discussed, and although some notes were taken they turned out to be illegible (certainly chaotic) the next morning.

Alex said there was a German tradition, "auf ex" where, when toasting a special occasion, everyone's glasses must be emptied. Steve's not so sure about that one; what's referred to as a "glass of beer" in Germany is more commonly known as a "pitcher" in the U.S. Alex also said we were at the Alter Simpl until at least 4am, but Steve is pretty sure we were wandering the streets of Munich by that time, trying to find an U-bahn or bus still running.

We will not get into who won the übergeek contest.