Almost arithmetic progressions in the primes and other large sets (1809.01409v2)

Abstract: A celebrated and deep result of Green and Tao states that the primes contain arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions. In this note I provide a straightforward argument demonstrating that the primes get arbitrarily close to arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions. The argument also applies to `large sets' in the sense of Erd\H{o}s-Tur\'an. The proof is short, completely self-contained, and aims to give a heuristic explanation of why the primes, and other large sets, possess arithmetic structure.