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Primes get rarer as numbers grow, and the rate at which they thin out follows a simple law.

Mathematics Facts, sourced to Wolfram MathWorld.

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Near a number of a given size, the chance that it is prime is roughly one over its natural logarithm. That means about one in five numbers near a hundred is prime, and about one in a thousand near a number with four hundred digits. The result was guessed by Gauss as a teenager from tables of primes and not proved for another century.

The claim comes from Wolfram MathWorld, and the page it comes from was read on 2026-08-27 to confirm it still says this.

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