We present a number of results about (finite) multiple harmonic sums modulo a prime, which provide interesting parallels to known results about multiple zeta values (i.e. infinite multiple harmonic series). In particular, we prove a ‘duality' result for mod
p harmonic sums similar to (but distinct from) that for multiple zeta values. We also exploit the Hopf algebra structure of the quasi-symmetric functions to perform calculations with multiple harmonic sums mod
p, and obtain, for each weight
n through nine, a set of generators for the space of weight-
n multiple harmonic sums mod
p. When combined with recent work, the results of this paper offer significant evidence that the number of quantities needed to generate the weight-
n multiple harmonic sums mod
p is the
nth Padovan number (OEIS sequence A000931).
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