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Riemann hypothesis


Sriman Dutta

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It is a difficult problem. What are you thinking by asking "why"?

How do we know it's difficult? Because so many people have been unable to solve it!

 

OP has a good question. What is it, exactly, that makes RH a difficult problem? Why have FLT and the Poincaré conjecture been solved, but not RH?

 

That's way above my pay grade. But at heart it's a very good question IMO.

Edited by wtf
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Nobody can find a technique that can predict what the next prime will be, to infinity without going through the list and working it out. They are trying to find a bespoke formula that can predict them; a shortcut. The pattern of occurrence of primes appears to be random but I think they think otherwise and, I think, that's one of the reasons why it is so difficult. This article by Marcus Du Sautoy gives an easy, potted read to the problem and it's history..

 

https://plus.maths.org/content/prime-number-lottery

Edited by StringJunky
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  • 1 month later...

Nobody can find a technique that can predict what the next prime will be, to infinity without going through the list and working it out. They are trying to find a bespoke formula that can predict them; a shortcut. The pattern of occurrence of primes appears to be random but I think they think otherwise and, I think, that's one of the reasons why it is so difficult. This article by Marcus Du Sautoy gives an easy, potted read to the problem and it's history..

 

https://plus.maths.org/content/prime-number-lottery

 

Actually we think that the primes behave essentially like a pseudo-random number sequence (with a few known differences that are already well-understood). The Riemann hypothesis would confirm some that (at least in parts). It would allow to make a lot of predictions about the behaviour of primes (because many methods used to study random number sequences could be used to tackle prime numbers).

It's a common misconception that the Riemann hypothesis would result in hidden patterns in the prime numbers. The opposite is true: The reason why there are so many unproven conjectures about primes is that we don't know if there are any fancy, hidden patterns.

Edited by renerpho
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Actually we think that the primes behave essentially like a pseudo-random number sequence (with a few known differences that are already well-understood). The Riemann hypothesis would confirm some that (at least in parts). It would allow to make a lot of predictions about the behaviour of primes (because many methods used to study random number sequences could be used to tackle prime numbers).

It's a common misconception that the Riemann hypothesis would result in hidden patterns in the prime numbers. The opposite is true: The reason why there are so many unproven conjectures about primes is that we don't know if there are any fancy, hidden patterns.

Right. Thanks for the clarification.

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