Seminars on Mathematics, UFPR, 2006

Title: Prime Numbers Without Mystery.

(26/10/2006, Prof. Jânia Duha )

Federal University of Parana

Curitiba, PR, Brazil.

http://www.mat.ufpr.br/mestrado/palestras.html
Prime Numbers without
Mystery

Jania Duha
2006
 Introduction
 From prehistoric man through ancient
Greecian times on into modern times, all
through the world the elusive prime
numbers have fascinated human minds.

 Faced with the problem of determining

when the next prime number will occur,
many scientists have locked themselves in
rooms, figuring, calculating, making logical
moves or intuitive leaps.
What is a Prime Number?
 A selection of quotations

When reading these, take note of the

profusion of emotional/poetic/ecstatic and
religiously-oriented language which is
used throughout. The words mystery,
mysterious and secrets appear numerous
times, but also sense of wonder, strange,
stunning, astonishing, baffling, bafflement,
devilment, surprise, endless surprises,
exasperating, perplexing …
…great mystery, magic, alchemist, elixir,
aesthetic appeal, works of art, poetry,
arcane music, secret harmony, Nature's
gift, inexplicable secrets of creation, gem,
gemstone, jewels, crown, heart, soul,
cosmos, abyss(es), divine, Holy Grail,
Lucifer, Devil and God.
 "Primenumbers are the most basic objects in
mathematics. They also are among the most
mysterious, for after centuries of study, the
structure of the set of prime numbers is still not
well understood. Describing the distribution of
primes is at the heart of much mathematics..."

A. Granville from AMS news release 5 December

1997
 "Mathematicians have tried in vain to
this day to discover some order in the
sequence of prime numbers, and we
have reason to believe that it is a
mystery into which the mind will never
penetrate."

Leonard Euler, in G. Simmons, Calculus Gems,

McGraw-Hill, New York, 1992
 "Prime numbers have always
fascinated mathematicians. They
appear among the integers seemingly
at random, and yet not quite: There
seems to be some order or pattern, just
a little below the surface, just a little
out of reach."

Underwood Dudley, Elementary Number Theory

(Freeman, 1978)
 "Theprimes have tantalized
mathematicians since the Greeks,
because they appear to be somewhat
randomly distributed but not
completely so."

T. Gowers, Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction

(Oxford Univ. Press, 2002), p.118
 "Who would have imagined that
something as straightforward as the
natural numbers (1, 2, 3, 4,...) could
give birth to anything so baffling as the
prime numbers (2, 3 ,5, 7, 11, ...)?"

Ian Stewart, "Jumping Champions", Scientific

American, December 2000
 "There are two facts about the distribution of prime
numbers which I hope to convince you so
overwhelmingly that they will be permanently
engraved in your hearts.
 The first is that despite their simple definition and
role as the building blocks of the natural numbers,
the prime numbers... grow like weeds among the
natural numbers, seeming to obey no other law than
that of chance, and nobody can predict where the
next one will sprout.
 The second fact is even more astonishing, for it
states just the opposite: that the prime numbers
exhibit stunning regularity, that there are laws
governing their behaviour, and that they obey these
laws with almost military precision."

Don Zagier, Bonn University inaugural lecture

 "Although the prime numbers are
rigidly determined, they somehow feel
like experimental data."

T. Gowers, Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford

Univ. Press, 2002), p.121
 "Itis evident that the primes are
randomly distributed but,
unfortunately, we don't know what
'random' means.''

R. C. Vaughan (February 1990)

 "Godmay not play dice with the
universe, but something strange is
going on with the prime numbers."

P. Erdös, referring to the famous quote of Einstein. From

"Homage to an Itinerant Master" by D. Mackenzie
(Science 275:759, 1997)
 "Giventhe millennia that people have
contemplated prime numbers, our
continuing ignorance concerning the
primes is stultifying."

R. Crandall and C. Pomerance, from

Prime Numbers: A Computational Perspective (Springer-
Verlag, 2001)
 Eratosthenes (200 BC)

Criou o mais famoso e eficiente algoritmo

para o calculo de numeros primos

Sieve of Eratosthenes
 Natural numbers

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8…

1 1+1 1+1+1 1+1+1+1 ….etc

The number “1” is the main “building

block” for natural numbers.
 The numbers 2 and 3 are
secondary building blocks

2 4 6 8 10 12
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 …
3 6 9 12
 Something is missing…

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 …
 Note that some numbers are provided by the two and the three
simultaneously. We will call these repeated numbers (6, 12, 18, 24, 30…)
as the "knots" of the sequence:

2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25...
3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24
Knots “k” 6n

Knot numbers “kn” 6n ± 1

Composite knot numbers “kc” (6n ± 1).(6n ± 1)

n = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ....
Simple knot numbers “ks” are

ks = kn - kc

“ PRIME NUMBERS “
Composite Knot Numbers
 PRIME NUMBERS PATTERN (Kc 5)

prime

kc

kn

0 50 100 150 200 250

 PRIME NUMBERS PATTERN (Kc 5)

ime

kc

kn

0 50 100 150 200 250

 PRIME NUMBERS PATTERN (Kc 7)

prime

kc

kn

0 50 100 150 200 250

 PRIME NUMBERS PATTERN (Kc 7)

me

kc

kn

0 50 100 150 200 250

prime

kc

kn

49 259 469
prime

kc

kn

49 259 469
 Number of primes for every thousand
200

Number of
-0.0904
primes 160 y = 247.53x y = -8.1863Ln(x) + 182.66

120

80

40

0
0E+00 1E+05 2E+05 3E+05 4E+05 5E+05 6E+05
Natural numbers
 Number of primes for every thousand
200

Number of -0.0904
y = 247.53x y = -8.1863Ln(x) + 182.66
primes 160

120

80

40

0
0E+00 2E+05 4E+05 6E+05 8E+05 1E+06
Natural numbers
 Number of primes for every thousand
200

Number of -0.0904
primes y = 247.53x y = -8.1863Ln(x) + 182.66
160

120

80

40

0
0E+00 2E+06 4E+06 6E+06 8E+06 1E+07
Natural numbers
 Number of primes to a given number "n"

30000
Number of primes

25000

20000

15000

10000

5000

0
0 50000 100000 150000 200000 250000 300000
Natural numbers
 NumberNumber
of primes to a given number "n"
of primes to a given number “n”
9
10
109
Number of primes

8
10
108

7
10
107

6
10
106
5
10
105

4
10
104
6 7 8 9 10
10106 10
107 10
108 109
10 10
1010

Pink marker  Legendre Blue line  Gauss

Natural numbers
Blue line  Gauss

π(n) ~ n / lnn + n / (lnn)2 + 2n / (lnn)3 + ...

Pink marker  Legendre

π(n) ~ n / (ln n – 1,08366)

 Notes

 Twin Primes
 n2 -1
 alawys a prime between n and 2n
 n2 – n +41 for 0 ≤ n ≤ 40
 etc…
 The largest prime RECORDS

 Mersenne prime M25964951  7 816 230 decimal digits

(February 2005)

 Largest twin primes: 242206083 x 238880 ± 1 

11713 digits (November, 1995)

 Largest factorial prime (prime of the form n! ± 1) 

3610! - 1  11277 digits (1993)

 Largest primordial prime (prime of the form n# ± 1 where

n# is product of all primes ≤ n)  24029# + 1 
10387 digits (1993)
 References

 Duha, J. Prime numbers without mystery, The

Mathematics Preprint Server, www.mathpreprints.com,
2004.
 Duha, J. Prime numbers as potential pseudo-random
code for GPS signals, Boletim de Ciencias Geodesicas,
v.10, p.215-224, 2004.
 Du Sautoy, M. The music of the primes, 2003.
 "It will be millions of years
before we'll have any understanding,
and even then it won't be a complete
understanding,
because we're up against the infinite."

P. Erdös (interview with P. Hoffman, Atlantic Monthly,

Nov. 1987, p. 74)