The distribution of consecutive prime biases and sums of sawtooth random variables

Abstract

In recent work, we considered the frequencies of patterns of consecutive primes $\pmod{q}$ and numerically found biases toward certain patterns and against others. We made a conjecture explaining these biases, the dominant factor in which permits an easy description but fails to distinguish many patterns that have seemingly very different frequencies. There was a secondary factor in our conjecture accounting for this additional variation, but it was given only by a complicated expression whose distribution was not easily understood. Here, we study this term, which proves to be connected to both the Fourier transform of classical Dedekind sums and the error term in the asymptotic formula for the sum of $\phi(n)$.