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MATHEMATICS OF COMPUTATION Volume 00, Number 0, Pages 000–000 S 0025-5718(XX)0000-0 COMPUTING THE INTEGER PARTITION FUNCTION NEIL CALKIN, JIMENA DAVIS, KEVIN JAMES, ELIZABETH PEREZ, AND CHARLES SWANNACK Abstract. In this paper we discuss efficient algorithms for com- puting the values of the partition function and implement these algorithms in order to conduct a numerical study of some conjec- tures related to the partition function. We present the distribution of p (N ) for N ≤ 109 for primes up to 103 and small powers of 2 and 3. 1. Introduction Here we discuss some open questions concerning the partition func- tion and algorithms for efficiently computing p (n) for all n up to some bound N . We then present some computational evidence related to these conjectures. A partition of a natural number n is a non-increasing sequence of natural numbers whose sum is n. The number of such partitions of n is denoted p (n). For example the partitions of 4 are: 4, 3 + 1, 2 + 2, 2 + 1 + 1 and 1 + 1 + 1 + 1. Thus, p (4) = 5. One way of studying the partition function is to study its generat- ing function. Euler [8] proved the following formula concerning this generating function. Received by the editor July 10, 2006. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary (05A17);Secondary (11P81, 11P83). Key words and phrases. partition function, discrete fast Fourier transforms. The authors were partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0139569 The third author was partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0090117 .