A previously unnoticed property of prime numbers

Re:A previously unnoticed property of prime numbers by indiv0 on Monday March 14, 2016 @01:34PM (#11284146)

I think the parent is saying that the statement:

    Looking at prime numbers written in base 3 — in which roughly half the primes end in 1 and half end in 2 — he found that among primes smaller than 1,000, a prime ending in 1 is more than twice as likely to be followed by a prime ending in 2 than by another prime ending in 1

is not interesting (as it seems to be just numerology), UNLESS the authors' conjecture is also true (that the statement also holds for bases > 2).

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Re:A previously unnoticed property of prime numbers by kafkaesq on Monday March 14, 2016 @02:35PM (#11284578)

The important part is that the authors (and several others) have verified the statistics out to a few hundred billion primes -- and that while the bias does start to drop out, it does so "very slowly." That's what makes this result not "numerology."

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Re:A previously unnoticed property of prime numbers by monochromatic on Monday March 14, 2016 @11:42PM (#11287296)

No, it would be interesting even if it only happened in one base. It's still unexpected.

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Re:A previously unnoticed property of prime numbers by baddox on Monday March 14, 2016 @05:56PM (#11285871)

It's interesting to me.

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