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This is addressed in the article: > Lemke Oliver and Soundararajan’s first guess for why this bias occurs was a simple one: Maybe a prime ending in 3, say, is

This is addressed in the article: > Lemke Oliver and Soundararajan’s first guess for why this bias occurs was a simple one: Maybe a prime ending in 3, say, is more likely to be followed by a prime ending in 7, 9 or 1 merely because it encounters numbers with those endings before it reaches another number ending in 3. For example, 43 is followed by 47, 49 and 51 before it hits 53, and one of those numbers, 47, is prime. > But the pair of mathematicians soon realized that this potential explanation couldn’t account for the magnitude of the biases they found. Nor could it explain why, as the pair found, primes ending in 3 seem to like being followed by primes ending in 9 more than 1 or 7. To explain these and other preferences, Lemke Oliver and Soundararajan had to delve into the deepest model mathematicians have for random behavior in the primes.

vessenes 11y ago
They did mention this, but they didn't talk real numbers. And, my second point is (I think) slightly more subtle -- the probability distributions need to be considered, not just the counting upward angle. As I'm writing this out, I'm a little less sure that this would matter, but I'll leave the comment out for the sake of discussion. :)
- jlarocco 11y ago
  I don't know why you're nitpicking. The article's written for a more general audience that may be interested in the property, but not necessarily the nitty-gritty math behind it. The first paragraph of the article links to the paper, so people who want more detail can get it. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.03720v1.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.03720v1.pdf For your second point, I don't think there's anything wrong with a paper announcing they found something interesting, even if they haven't completely analyzed every aspect of it. Getting the info out early lets a wider audience look at it, and opens their current research up to scrutiny.

vessenes 11y ago

They did mention this, but they didn't talk real numbers. And, my second point is (I think) slightly more subtle -- the probability distributions need to be considered, not just the counting upward angle. As I'm writing this out, I'm a little less sure that this would matter, but I'll leave the comment out for the sake of discussion. :)

jlarocco 11y ago
I don't know why you're nitpicking. The article's written for a more general audience that may be interested in the property, but not necessarily the nitty-gritty math behind it. The first paragraph of the article links to the paper, so people who want more detail can get it. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.03720v1.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.03720v1.pdf For your second point, I don't think there's anything wrong with a paper announcing they found something interesting, even if they haven't completely analyzed every aspect of it. Getting the info out early lets a wider audience look at it, and opens their current research up to scrutiny.