This algorithm can tell which number sequences a human will find interesting The result hints that machines could one day be trained to spot mathematical elegance and beauty.

For centuries, prime numbers have captured the imaginations of mathematicians, who continue to search for new patterns that help identify them and the way they’re distributed among other numbers ...

At the time the work was released, the trio were all still in graduate school. Sequences of regularly spaced numbers are called arithmetic progressions. Though they’re simple patterns, they hide ...