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Are Mersennes any more or less likely to be excluded by a probabilistic primality test than other numbers might be?



The algorithm for testing a Mersenne number for primality has the same running time as performing a pseudoprime test, so there's no point using such probabilistic tests. It is however useful to perform "trial division" to exclude small factors.


https://www.mersenne.org/various/math.php

If you scroll to the very bottom there's some stuff on recent use of probable prime proofs, as well as a fairly detailed explanation of how the whole thing operates.


I do not know. Maybe Colin Wright would be able to comment on this.




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