We consider the nonlinear Schr\"odinger (NLS) equation posed on the box $[0,L]^d$ with periodic boundary conditions. The aim is to describe the long-time dynamics by deriving effective equations for it when $L$ is large and the characteristic size $\epsilon$ of the data is small... Such questions arise naturally when studying dispersive equations that are posed on large domains (like water waves in the ocean), and also in theory of statistical physics of dispersive waves, that goes by the name of "wave turbulence". Our main result is deriving a new equation, the continuous resonant (CR) equation, that describes the effective dynamics for large $L$ and small $\epsilon$ over very large time-scales. Such time-scales are well beyond the (a) nonlinear time-scale of the equation, and (b) the Euclidean time-scale at which the effective dynamics are given by (NLS) on $\mathbb R^d$. The proof relies heavily on tools from analytic number theory, such as a relatively modern version of the Hardy-Littlewood circle method, which are modified and extended to be applicable in a PDE setting. (read more)