The Prime Number Theorem on the Nose

Alex Kontorovich will give the talk on Tuesday, November 15 at 4:15 in Math 622. This lecture will be open to all.

Abstract: When Gauss was a little boy, he did many wonderful things. One of them was conjecture the asymptotic formula for the number of primes less than some fixed bound, which of course implies an asymptotic formula for the size of the n-th prime. About a century later, his conjecture was answered affirmatively and is now known as the Prime Number Theorem. We will describe (read: handwave) a recent result on how many primes are exactly equal to their average value (we call these "primes on the nose"). No prior knowledge is assumed.


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