TITLE: What percentage of positive integers, written in base 10, are composite regardless of what base they are interpreted in?
QUESTION [5 upvotes]: There is a sequence of numbers (OEIS A121719) with the following defenition:
If the string of base-$10$ digits corresponding to the positive integer $k$ is composite when interpreted in any possible base $b$, then $k$ is in the sequence.
After writing a program to find values of the sequence, I was curious whether the percentage of numbers $k<n$ in the sequence approaches a certain value as $n$ increases. I will now formally define my question:
$A$ is the set of all positive integers in the sequence defined above.
$$C(n)=1\:\text{if}\:n\in A,\:\text{otherwise}\:0$$
$$L=\lim_{n\to\infty}\frac{1}{n}\sum^n_{i=1} C(i)$$
I would like to know:

Does the limit $L$ exist?
Is $L>0$?
Is there some method to find $L$ or the first $n$ digits of $L$?

REPLY [4 votes]: I claim that assuming the Bunyakovsky conjecture and the extended Riemann hypothesis (i.e. RH for all Dedekind zeta functions), the limit $L$ exists and equals
$$ L = \frac{59/18 + 1/5^4 + 1/7^6}{10} = \frac{4340435807}{13235512500} \approx 0.32793862776. $$
(Both of these hypotheses seem like really big hammers, but I'm pretty sure there is no easy way around either of them.)
Proof:  Identify nonnegative integers $k$ with the polynomials $f_k(x)$ whose coefficients are their base-10 expansions.  The Bunyakovsky conjecture predicts that any $f_k(x)$ not satisfying condition 2 or 3 will produce infinitely many prime values at positive integer inputs.  In particular, it will produce some primes at inputs $b$ which are large enough (say, $b \geq 10$) for $k$ to be interpreted in base $b$.  This implies, conditional on Bunyakovsky, that every term of the sequence must satisfy condition 2 or 3 from the comment on OEIS.
Let's consider condition 3.  Any common divisor of the values of $f_k(x)$ is in particular a divisor of $f_k(0)$, namely the last digit of $k$.  This implies that if the last digit of $k$ is nonzero, $k$ can never satisfy condition 3 for any prime $p > 7$.  Of course, if the last digit of $k$ is zero (and $k > 10$), then $k$ automatically satisfies condition 2.  So it suffices to consider condition 3 with $p = 2, 3, 5$, and $7$, along with condition 2.
Now consider condition 2.  It's relatively uncommon for a polynomial with small integer coefficients to be reducible.  In fact, assuming the extended Riemann hypothesis, Corollary 3 of this recent paper of Breuillard and Varjú implies that as $d \to \infty$, the proportion of degree-$d$ polynomials with $\{0, \dots, 9\}$ coefficients that are reducible is $\frac{1}{10} + O(d^{-1/2})$.  (Take $\mu$ to be the uniform distribution on $\{0, \dots, 9\}$ and $N = 1$.  The $\frac{1}{10}$ comes from polynomials vanishing at 0; i.e. integers $k$ that are divisible by 10.)  So as $k \to \infty$, we can ignore condition 2 except as it pertains to multiples of 10.
At this point, it's just a matter of going through the casework of condition 3 for $p = 2, 3, 5, 7$.  You can check that $f_k(x) = \sum_i a_i x^i$ satisfies condition 3 for a given $p$ if and only if the following two hypotheses hold:  (a) $p$ divides $a_0$, and (b) for all $0 \leq t < p-1$, $p$ divides
$$ \sum_{i > 0, i \equiv t \pmod{p-1}} a_i. $$
(Equivalently, $f_k(x)$ lies in the ideal $(p, x^p - x) \subset \mathbb Z[x]$.)  As $k \to \infty$, (b) happens with probability $1/p^{p-1}$, independently of $a_0$.  So the probability that $n$ is in the sequence given each possible last digit is as follows:

$P = 1$ (condition 2)
$P = 0$
$P = 1/2$ ($p = 2$)
$P = 1/9$ ($p = 3$)
$P = 1/2$ ($p = 2$)
$P = 1/5^4$ ($p = 5$)
$P = 5/9$ ($p = 2$ or $3$)
$P = 1/7^6$ ($p = 7$)
$P = 1/2$ ($p = 2$)
$P = 1/9$ ($p = 3$)

(Note that for $a_0 = 6$, the conditions coming from $p = 2$ and $p = 3$ are independent as $k \to \infty$.)  Averaging these ten probabilities gives the final answer.