On Thu, 26 Mar 1998, Leon Heller wrote:

> >what exactly is a pseudo prime number???? :-)
>
> A pseudo-prime number is one generated by an algorithm.

  Well, no.
  The prime number sive we all learned in grade school
  is an algorithm... and it produces only primes and not
  just psudo-primes.

  A psudo-prime is one generated by a probabilistic algorithm that
  *might* generate a non-prime (albeit with low probability).

  For most of them one can determine the probablity,
  and can make it small by many iterations.  For example
  one commercial package considers a possible failure
  rate of 1 / (2**128)  to be an acceptable rate of
  non-primes.