COURSE NOTES: Below are scanned copies of my lecture notes from when I taught a variant of this course as a senior seminar (click here for additional comments from each day's lecture from that class). Skimming these notes is a good way to prepare for lecture and to review the material; however, it is not the case that everything said in lecture will be in these notes for two reasons: (1) I hope to have a lot of class discussion, and these comments will undoubtably influence which direction we pursue; (2) detailed explanations of many arguments are given in the book, so often I have just jotted down notes to remind myself of what I wanted to mention.
COURSE NOTES AND HANDOUTS: Below are scanned copies of my lecture notes from teaching the course as a senior seminar in 2009.
- Errata for the book (if/when you find others, or places where the exposition could be clearer, please let me know)
- Additional comments from each day's lecture
- Complete set of notes (about 7 megs)
- Overview (description of problems, table showing the interconnectedness of the questions and techniques / material)
- nkα mod 1 and Poissonian behavior (the chapter from the book is available online: click here for Poissonian behavior)
- Fourier analysis for nkα mod 1 (basics of Fourier analysis leading up to Fejer's theorem)
- Random matrix theory (the first of the four chapters from the book is available online: click here for Chapter 15, the introduction)
- The Circle Method
- Benford's law
- Riemann Zeta Function and L-functions
- Fourier analysis for Benford's Law and L-functions (Poisson Summation)
SUPPLEMENTAL READING: For more on each topic, click below to go to a subpage with handouts and reading recommendations: