A new pattern in the distribution of primes was uncovered in early February 2018. Apparently, it was overlooked by whole generations of mathematicians despite being rather large. It is a statistical bias, a deviation from what should be expected, in the distribution of prime numbers, that has a slightly different quantitative properties for prime pairs (twins) and isolated primes.
I write about it in two posts on my other (business) blog. The first of stories tells a bit about the bias discovery. The other, more recent, revisits this topic.
The paper that describes this effect in considerable mathematical detail, entitled "Statistical Bias in the Distribution of Prime Pairs and Isolated Primes," can be read online at this preprint repository.
No comments:
Post a Comment