English

Hitting k primes by dice rolls

Probability 2025-02-13 v1 Combinatorics Number Theory

Abstract

Let S=(d1,d2,d3,)S=(d_1,d_2,d_3, \ldots ) be an infinite sequence of rolls of independent fair dice. For an integer k1k \geq 1, let Lk=Lk(S)L_k=L_k(S) be the smallest ii so that there are kk integers jij \leq i for which t=1jdt\sum_{t=1}^j d_t is a prime. Therefore, LkL_k is the random variable whose value is the number of dice rolls required until the accumulated sum equals a prime kk times. It is known that the expected value of L1L_1 is close to 2.432.43. Here we show that for large kk, the expected value of LkL_k is (1+o(1))klogek(1+o(1)) k\log_e k, where the o(1)o(1)-term tends to zero as kk tends to infinity. We also include some computational results about the distribution of LkL_k for k100k \leq 100.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2502.08096,
  title  = {Hitting k primes by dice rolls},
  author = {Noga Alon and Yaakov Malinovsky and Lucy Martinez and Doron Zeilberger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.08096},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:41:08.312Z