mersenneforum.org No way to measure record prime gaps
 Register FAQ Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

 2018-05-13, 22:45 #1 Bobby Jacobs     May 2018 3518 Posts No way to measure record prime gaps Is there a way to measure how big a record prime gap is compared to the expected record prime gap? It might say how many standard deviations above the expected value the gap is. For example, a value of 0 would be an average record prime gap. A value of 2 would be a surprisingly large record prime gap. A value of -1 would be a small record prime gap. What is a way to measure this?
 2018-05-13, 23:37 #2 ATH Einyen     Dec 2003 Denmark 52·127 Posts You take the length of the gap call it: gn and divide it by ln(pn) where ln is the natural logarithm. The result is called the merit of the gap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_gap merit = gn / ln(pn) If you get merit > 30 you have a very large gap, if you get merit above 41.938784 you found a record gap. It is proven that merit can be arbitrarily large as n gets large, so there should be much higher merits our there somewhere. You can also divide the gap by ln(pn) twice: gn / ln(pn)2 this is called the Cramér–Shanks–Granville ratio and the record is: 0.9206386 but anything above 0.5 is pretty good if your gap>1500. The Cramér–Shanks–Granville ratio does not get arbitrarily large, but is conjected to have a maximum somewhere around 1.12 Last fiddled with by ATH on 2018-05-13 at 23:45
 2018-05-14, 13:02 #3 Bobby Jacobs     May 2018 233 Posts I would really like a measure of record prime gaps where a big value for a record gap between small numbers is a big value for a record gap between large numbers. The size of the gap will not work. For example, the prime gap between 1327 and 1361 has size 34, which is very big for numbers that size. However, a gap of 34 between larger numbers is not very great. The merit of a gap has the same problem. The gap from 1327 to 1361 has merit 4.7, but a merit of 4.7 is not impressive for larger numbers. Even the CSG ratio is not perfect. The CSG ratio of the gap from 1327 to 1361 is 0.65. However, the CSG ratios of the bigger record prime gaps are all at least 0.8. Do you know a prime gap measure where a good value of a record prime gap between small numbers is a good value of a record prime gap between large numbers? Last fiddled with by Bobby Jacobs on 2018-05-14 at 13:06
 2018-05-14, 13:58 #4 CRGreathouse     Aug 2006 3·1,993 Posts CSG is approximately scale invariant. A good value at any size will be around 1 (we think), 1327 to 1361 is just a small gap (not a big gap at a low height) in my interpretation. CSG more than 1 + eps for any fixed eps > 0 should be much more rare than merits 'merely' near 1 which should be fairly common (although we haven't seen it happen yet, ignoring 7 and below).
2018-05-14, 14:35   #5
rudy235

Jun 2015
Vallejo, CA/.

2·5·101 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by Bobby Jacobs I would really like a measure of record prime gaps where a big value for a record gap between small numbers is a big value for a record gap between large numbers. The size of the gap will not work. For example, the prime gap between 1327 and 1361 has size 34, which is very big for numbers that size. However, a gap of 34 between larger numbers is not very great. The merit of a gap has the same problem. The gap from 1327 to 1361 has merit 4.7, but a merit of 4.7 is not impressive for larger numbers. Even the CSG ratio is not perfect. The CSG ratio of the gap from 1327 to 1361 is 0.65. However, the CSG ratios of the bigger record prime gaps are all at least 0.8. Do you know a prime gap measure where a good value of a record prime gap between small numbers is a good value of a record prime gap between large numbers?
OK once again.
The average gap between 2 primes is approximately ln(p1) -where p1 is the lowest end of the gap-.

This comes from the Prime Number Theorem (PNT) proven by Hadamard and de la Vallée Poussin in the late XIX Century

A gap can in theory be as small as 2 and as big as around ln2p1

Having said that the "merit" which is the ratio of gn/ln p1 gives an excelent idea of how big is the gap in terms of probability. Merits of 1 are the most common. Merits of 0.5 or of 2 are less frequent. Merits of 0,1 or 10 are even less common and the largest (or smallest) a merit is -relative to 1- the less common it is. It follows more or less a Gaussian distribution with the peak at ln(p).

However (as it has been said before) merits can also be larger than any preset number, if we accept the Cramér's conjecture https://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/ch...ann/cramer.pdf. For instance in the veciniry of a Googolplex 10^(10^100) you should be able to find merits as large as 530

 2018-05-14, 16:23 #6 CRGreathouse     Aug 2006 3×1,993 Posts Well... we should not accept the Cramér conjecture since it's not thought to hold. Mathematicians are divided on what should be true: some think that $CSG_\infty=\limsup \frac{p_{n+1}-p_n}{(\log p_n)^2}$ is $\frac{2}{e^\gamma} = 1.1229\ldots$ while others think that it is infinite and a few think it may even be between the two. In the 21st century I've only seen nonmathematicians argue that its value should be 1 and I haven't seen anyone hold that it should be between 1 and 2/e^gamma or less than 1.
2018-05-14, 17:07   #7
rudy235

Jun 2015
Vallejo, CA/.

3F216 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by CRGreathouse Well... we should not accept the Cramér conjecture since it's not thought to hold. Mathematicians are divided on what should be true: some think that $CSG_\infty=\limsup \frac{p_{n+1}-p_n}{(\log p_n)^2}$ is $\frac{2}{e^\gamma} = 1.1229\ldots$ while others think that it is infinite and a few think it may even be between the two. In the 21st century I've only seen nonmathematicians argue that its value should be 1 and I haven't seen anyone hold that it should be between 1 and 2/e^gamma or less than 1.
Hence the "if". (I am not arguing it is correct)

I actually made a big mistake is estimating what the merit of a large gap after a googolplex (a 1 folowed by 10100 zeroes) could end up being. It would be, again assuming as if the Cramér Conjecture were correct, much larger than 530 and an insane number aproximating 2.3 e 10100

Last fiddled with by rudy235 on 2018-05-14 at 17:33 Reason: clarifiyng concepts

 2018-05-15, 00:40 #8 ATH Einyen     Dec 2003 Denmark 52×127 Posts For the known big prime gaps GSC is only above 0.8 below 2^64 and it gets smaller and smaller with bigger primes even if those gaps have merit above 35, and it is really tiny for the largest gaps. Any new big gap above 2^64 with GSC above 0.8 or even 0.5 would be something new. Code: Gn Pn Merit Gn/(ln(Pn)^2) Ford-Green-Konyagin-Maynard-Tao 5103138 7.69542115*10^216848 10.22031845 0.00002047 2.12060937 6582144 8.46506984*10^216840 13.18288411 0.00002640 2.73531863 4680156 5.10477651*10^99749 20.37666041 0.00008872 4.50159088 66520 3.29280820*10^815 35.42445941 0.01886489 13.50196237 26892 4.69622677*10^320 36.42056789 0.04932537 16.38392439 26054 5.88832005*10^305 37.00529401 0.05255975 16.80505451 18306 7.04109715*10^208 38.06696007 0.07915948 18.72974074 15900 1.93693327*10^174 39.62015365 0.09872683 20.31243105 13692 3.25418593*10^162 36.59018324 0.09778276 19.07131098 10716 1.83937772*10^126 36.85828850 0.12677617 20.45427745 8382 1.74442287*10^96 37.82412584 0.17068295 22.59742318 8350 2.93703234*10^86 41.93878373 0.21064211 25.84973884 1510 6787988999657777797 34.82336886 0.80309074 43.33266457 1454 3219107182492871783 34.11893253 0.80062005 43.03407437 1476 1425172824437699411 35.31030807 0.84472754 45.22507308 1442 804212830686677669 34.97568651 0.84833471 45.29864017 1370 418032645936712127 33.76518602 0.83218087 44.30979390 1132 1693182318746371 32.28254764 0.92063859 48.34468117 Ford-Green-Konyagin-Maynard-Tao: log X * loglog X * loglogloglog X G(X) > --------------------------------- logloglog X
 2018-05-15, 16:08 #9 henryzz Just call me Henry     "David" Sep 2007 Cambridge (GMT/BST) 134318 Posts Do we have any idea of the probability distribution for CSG or any of the other gap rating systems? Are there any that are independent of the size of p_n?
2018-05-15, 17:04   #10
CRGreathouse

Aug 2006

3×1,993 Posts

Quote:
 Originally Posted by henryzz Do we have any idea of the probability distribution for CSG or any of the other gap rating systems? Are there any that are independent of the size of p_n?
g_n/log(p_n) is independent of the size of p_n -- it's approximately exponentially exponentially distributed with λ = log 2. But I don't think that's what you mean.

 2018-05-15, 18:52 #11 ATH Einyen     Dec 2003 Denmark 52·127 Posts Looking at Dr, Nicely's list there are many gaps between 2^64 and 10^27 with GSC above 0.5, the highest GSC I found so far above 2^64 is: 1750 C?C Spielaur 2016 32.10 24 475135024904107611376237 with GSC=0.58878947

 Similar Threads Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post Terence Schraut Miscellaneous Math 10 2020-09-01 23:49 Bobby Jacobs Prime Gap Searches 52 2020-08-22 15:20 Bobby Jacobs Prime Gap Searches 6 2018-12-07 23:39 Bobby Jacobs Prime Gap Searches 11 2018-07-02 00:28 HellGauss Computer Science & Computational Number Theory 18 2015-11-16 14:21

All times are UTC. The time now is 08:49.

Mon Oct 18 08:49:02 UTC 2021 up 87 days, 3:18, 0 users, load averages: 1.21, 1.43, 1.38