Swans on Tea

New Pattern Found in Prime Numbers

Since the late ‘70s, researchers have known that prime numbers themselves, when taken in very large data sets, are not distributed according to Benford’s law. Instead, the first digit distribution of primes seems to be approximately uniform. However, as Luque and Lacasa point out, smaller data sets (intervals) of primes exhibit a clear bias in first digit distribution. The researchers noticed another pattern: the larger the data set of primes they analyzed, the more closely the first digit distribution approached uniformity. In light of this, the researchers wondered if there existed any pattern underlying the trend toward uniformity as the prime interval increases to infinity

I linked to a video about Benford’s law a while back.