Machine Learnability as a Measure of Order in Aperiodic Sequences
This work offers a novel experimental tool for number theory, potentially aiding cryptographic analysis of prime patterns, though it is incremental in applying existing ML methods to a new domain.
The paper tackled the problem of measuring regularity in prime number distributions using machine learning on Ulam spirals, finding that models trained on regions near 500 million integers outperformed those on regions below 25 million in accuracy, indicating more learnable order at higher magnitudes.
Research on the distribution of prime numbers has revealed a dual character: deterministic in definition yet exhibiting statistical behavior reminiscent of random processes. In this paper we show that it is possible to use an image-focused machine learning model to measure the comparative regularity of prime number fields at specific regions of an Ulam spiral. Specifically, we demonstrate that in pure accuracy terms, models trained on blocks extracted from regions of the spiral in the vicinity of 500m outperform models trained on blocks extracted from the region representing integers lower than 25m. This implies existence of more easily learnable order in the former region than in the latter. Moreover, a detailed breakdown of precision and recall scores seem to imply that the model is favouring a different approach to classification in different regions of the spiral, focusing more on identifying prime patterns at lower numbers and more on eliminating composites at higher numbers. This aligns with number theory conjectures suggesting that at higher orders of magnitude we should see diminishing noise in prime number distributions, with averages (density, AP equidistribution) coming to dominate, while local randomness regularises after scaling by log x. Taken together, these findings point toward an interesting possibility: that machine learning can serve as a new experimental instrument for number theory. Notably, the method shows potential 1 for investigating the patterns in strong and weak primes for cryptographic purposes.