Machine learning and prime numbers
Sahasra Chinthireddy
Undergraduate Researcher
Finance Major (Kelley School of Business)
Matthias Strauch
Faculty Mentor
Matthias Strauch (College of Arts & Sciences)
Project Description
Machine learning, a branch of Artificial Intelligence (AI), is about algorithms which are trained on certain data to perform a range of tasks with the information stored in these data. This project is about sets of prime numbers which are called "splitting primes". For example, the set of all prime numbers of the form 4n+1 is such a set. The first few primes in this set are 5, 13, 17, 29, 37, etc. In this project we will study certain classes (types) of sets of splitting primes, and create functions which encode these sets of primes. The graphs of those functions can then we analyzed by machine learning algorithms with the goal to distinguish these types. Developing other approaches to "visualize" those sets of primes, and to reveal patters in them, will be part of the project.
Technology or Computational Component
In the beginning the student will learn some theoretical prerequisites from Number Theory. Most of the time will be spent on creating Python code and running it on platforms like CoCalc and Google Colab to investigate these sets of prime numbers. We will also use LaTeX and the online LaTeX processor Overleaf to keep track of our findings and to create a poster at the end of the project.