Friedlander Brief History of Primes

1. The lecture was very interesting. The best part I think was the fact that Dr. Friedlander catered his lecture to undergraduates, especially those with little mathematical background. That was a very wise move on the part of everyone involved. The most difficult part of the lecture was his use of the pi function. I couldn't tell if that was the function that takes a number as input and outputs the number of primes up to that number. I say this because later I swear he said that the number of primes up to x is equal to pi(x)-pi(x^1/2)+1.
2. The most interesting parts for me were when he was briefly going over some of the interesting characteristics of prime numbers as a whole. For instance, the fact that groups of primes that occur as consecutive odd numbers and how there is no real established pattern as to why that happens. The categories of primes he mentioned such as Mersenne primes were also interesting. The method of singling out the primes (Sieve of Eratosthenes) was also very intriguing.