This chapter serves two purposes. First, there are all kinds of interesting facts ahout prime numbers, and this chapter collates some of the ones I personally find amazing. What are your favorites?
Secondly, exploring the wonderful world of primes will start us heading back toward other arithmetic functions, especially toward developing the language we’ll need to explore \(\pi(x)\) more rigorously.
. Paulo Ribenboim has several well-known books about them, such as The Little Book of Bigger Primes[E.4.17].
But for usability, I have to mention one of the best web sites about primes. This is the Prime Pages 2
t5k.org
, a labor of love by Chris Caldwell (emeritus at University of Tennessee Martin). It’s just amazingly full of useful information, but also quite user-friendly and usable for people with a large variety of backgrounds. In particular, the ‘Top Twenty’s Complete Index 3