Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 August 2017
We show that $\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}(n)$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FA}(n)$, the number of distinct prime factors of $n$ and the number of distinct prime factors of $n$ counted according to multiplicity, are good weighting functions for the pointwise ergodic theorem in $L^{1}$. That is, if $g$ denotes one of these functions and $S_{g,K}=\sum _{n\leq K}g(n)$, then for every ergodic dynamical system $(X,{\mathcal{A}},\unicode[STIX]{x1D707},\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F})$ and every $f\in L^{1}(X)$,