Mathematicians Discover Prime Conspiracy (quantamagazine.org)

An anonymous reader writes with an intriguing story at Quanta Magazine, which begins: Two mathematicians have uncovered a simple, previously unnoticed property of prime numbers — those numbers that are divisible only by 1 and themselves. Prime numbers, it seems, have decided preferences about the final digits of the primes that immediately follow them. Among the first billion prime numbers, for instance, a prime ending in 9 is almost 65 percent more likely to be followed by a prime ending in 1 than another prime ending in 9. In a paper posted online today, Kannan Soundararajan and Robert Lemke Oliver of Stanford University present both numerical and theoretical evidence that prime numbers repel other would-be primes that end in the same digit, and have varied predilections for being followed by primes ending in the other possible final digits. "We've been studying primes for a long time, and no one spotted this before," said Andrew Granville, a number theorist at the University of Montreal and University College London. "It's crazy."

Comments

8 9

[Travis Mansbridge]

7 did it.

Re:8 9

[Aighearach]

One, two, few, lot, many... too many.

Cut it out!

[Brett Buck]

Stop anthropomorphizing prime numbers. They hate that!

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

>Two mathematicians have uncovered a simple, previously unnoticed property of prime numbers — those numbers that are divisible only by 1 and themselves.

Did anyone else LOL when they read the first sentence. My first thought was who wouldn't notice primes are only divisible by 1 and themselves it's the definition, duh.

Re:LOL

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Did anyone else LOL when they read the first sentence.

Yes. I initially though someone had pranked SlashDot by convincing the editors that no one knew that property of primes before. If so, that would have been the ultimate SlashDot dup - 2500 years or so in the making.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Some readers may not understand the term "prime number", so an explanation could be very useful.

I am currently reading Slashdot on a "computer", which is an electronic device that stores and manipulates information.

That's nothing

[Sun]

After a prime ending in 2 or 5, there has to be at least a billion primes before another one can end in 2 or 5.

Shachar

Re:Bruce Schneier can factor any prime instantly!

[Opportunist]

Great, now he has to come up with a new one.

Private keys are supposed to be kept secret, dammit!

The occurrence of digits is linked to the base

[dsmatthews9379]

Last time I looked at primes in binary I noticed a 100% chance that the next one ended in 1. No I am not trolling you I'm just making a point, go look at the primes in different bases and see what you notice.

Re:How about prime numbers of base 12 number?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, there are no numbers ending with the digit of '9' in base 7. Quite a conspiracy!

Re:Bizarre paragraph in the linked article

[epine]

You missed the absolutely critical corollary that restores balance to the force: after Bob succeeds, he's already halfway to his next success where after Alice succeeds, she needs to snooze for one toss before she's back in the game, where apparently the game involves some gender-swap role play.

It's so totally male to cease thinking the problem through after attaining the initial success condition.

I think I could teach a very interesting grade XI math class.

Corollary: I would end up behind bars.

10?

[fyngyrz]

10 is divisible by 1,2, 5, and 10, so how is it prime?