Here's a conjecture and proof.
p! == 1 (mod p+2) if and only if (p+2) is prime. (I use '==' for congruent)
Equivalently
(p-2)! == 1 (mod p) if and only if p is prime. (yes, 0! = 1 is true, look it up)
Proof:
Wilson's Theorem states (p-1)! == -1 (mod p) if and only if p is prime.
Starting with a prime p, make a change of variables u=p-2 so Wilson's Theorem becomes
(u+1)! == -1 (mod u+2) if and only if (u+2) is prime.
In the multiplicative group of integers modulo p, each nonzero element has an inverse.
So multiplying by the inverse of (u+1):
(u+1)-1(u+1)! == (u+1)-1(-1) (mod u+2) if and only if (u+2) is prime.
For the LHS, the first 2 factors reduce to 1 because (u+1)-1(u+1) = 1
and 1 is the identity element of the group so the LHS becomes u!
For the RHS, we use the fact that u+1 == -1 (mod u+2) so that the RHS becomes
(u+1)-1(u+1) which we saw above equals 1. So
u! == 1 (mod u+2) if and only if (u+2) is prime.
QED (the name of the variable doesn't matter)
Equivalently we can put back the substitution u=p-2 and we have the other relation
(p-2)! == 1 (mod p) if and only if p is prime.
For an application of this theorem, we can use it to test for twin primes.
In pseudocode
for the first 50 odd primes: print p, mod(p!, p+2)
In WxMaxima
p:2$for c:1 thru 50 do block(p:next_prime(p),print(p,mod(p!,p+2)));
This code produces a residue of 1 when p is the first member of a twin prime, and 0 otherwise.
As a derivative of Wilson's Theorem, it is just as impractical.
Basically it just avoids the 2 multiplications that would take (p-1)! to (p+1)! |