Abstract:
To understand the natural numbers, wemust first understand the primes. Yet the be-havior of the primes remains for the most parta mystery. For example, despite the efforts of many great mathematicians over hundreds of years, we still know very little about how the primes are distributed (scattered) throughout the natural numbers.The results and conjectures pertaining to the distribution of the primes, known as prime distribution theory, was the topic chosen for the fall 2004 student-faculty seminar. With such a challenging topic, the group experienced both theheightsof inspiration and the depths of confusion. What follows is a description ofvarious aspects of the seminar, including both highlights and ‘lowlights.’
