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I have seen many “plots” of prime numbers that look really good. In addition to looking good, I sometimes _swear_ I see a pattern. It’s really frustrating, to s

I have seen many “plots” of prime numbers that look really good. In addition to looking good, I sometimes _swear_ I see a pattern. It’s really frustrating, to see something on a graph which looks like it follows some pattern or algorithm[1], and to know that finding the mathematical definition of that pattern would would be revolutionary, world news. I can see why so many people get sucked into this problem. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/7v02i6/comparison_between_5000_and_50000_prime_numbers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/7v02i6/comparison_bet...

CyborgCabbage 4y ago
Knew I remembered that spiral from somewhere https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK32jo7i5LQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK32jo7i5LQ
- hinkley 4y ago
  This is a very good video. The tl;dr on it is that all primes are of the pattern 3n±1, and 2𝞹 (polar coordinates) is .283 mod 3, hence the primary curve. Then he explains about fractions that approximate pi, but I think he's over-explaining. Reducing a fraction means making the denominator and numerator co-prime, and in the case of pi approximations, the interesting ones all have prime numbers as the denominator, so the 3n±1 pattern appears again.
mg 4y ago
There is a movie from 1998 called "pi" about a number theorist who got sucked into it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_(film) I saw it a long time ago, but still vividly remember some of the scenes.
- kortilla 4y ago
  Yeah, some of that movie really gets drilled into your head.