An integer
is called a jumping champion if
is the most frequently occurring difference between consecutive
primes
(Odlyzko et al. 1999). This term was coined by
J. H. Conway in 1993. There are occasionally several jumping champions
in a range. The scatter plots above show the jumping champions for small
, and the ranges of number having given jumping champion sets
are summarized in the following table.
1 | 3 |
1, 2 | 5 |
2 | 7-100, 103-106, 109-112, ... |
2, 4 | 101-102, 107-108, 113-130, ... |
4 | 131-138, ... |
2, 4, 6 | 179-180, 467-490, ... |
2, 6 | 379-388, 421-432, ... |
6 | 389-420, ... |
Odlyzko et al. (1999) give a table of jumping champions for , consisting mainly of 2, 4, and 6. 6 is the jumping
champion up to about
,
at which point 30 dominates. At
, 210 becomes champion, and subsequent primorials
are conjectured to take over at larger and larger
. Erdős and Straus (1980) proved that the jumping champions
tend to infinity under the assumption of a quantitative form of the
-tuples conjecture.
Wolf gives a table of approximate values at which the primorial
will become a champion. An estimate
for
is given by