Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Claim. The statement of Problem 476 holds. Theorem 2 of N. Alon, M. B. Nathanson and I. Ruzsa, Adding distinct congruence classes modulo a prime: for a prime and with , the set of sums of two distinct elements of has . The paper labels the theorem with the names of Dias da Silva and Hamidoune and gives a new proof in three lines from its Theorem 1, for , applied to and . Theorem 1 is proved by the polynomial method: if , the polynomial of degree vanishes on while its coefficient of is , which after an interpolation step contradicts the Alon--Tarsi lemma. The sequel, The polynomial method and restricted sums of congruence classes (J. Number Theory 1996), restates the bound as its Theorem 1.3 and proves the general theorem, for sums of distinct elements, as its Theorem 3.3 from a sharp bound for sums with all summands distinct drawn from several sets (Theorem 3.2), both credited to Dias da Silva and Hamidoune. The two papers are one claimant's result. Read depth: claims checked for the statements on the 1995 result page and the 1996 result page, the proofs of Theorem 2 (1995) and Theorem 3.3 (1996) read in full and the proofs of Theorem 1 and Theorem 3.2 for structure; none of the proofs is independently reviewed.
Depends on. Nothing in this wiki: the proof is self-contained and does not use the original argument of Dias da Silva and Hamidoune.
Formalization. The file src/v4.29.1/ErdosProblems/Erdos476.lean of Boris
Alexeev's repository lean-proofs (535 lines at the linked commit of
2026-09-15; the path dates from a renaming of 24 June 2026) declares itself a
Lean formalization of a solution to the problem. Its header lists as informal
authors Dias da Silva, Hamidoune, Alon, Nathanson, Ruzsa and ChatGPT, and as
formal authors Aristotle and Boris Alexeev; the repository's copy for
toolchain v4.24.0 (linked above at the same commit) says in its header that
the original proof was found by Dias da Silva and Hamidoune, that ChatGPT
explained a different proof, by the polynomial method and Combinatorial
Nullstellensatz due to Alon, Nathanson and Ruzsa, citing the 1995 paper, and
that Aristotle (Harmonic) auto-formalized that proof and wrote the final
statement. The file defines restrictedSumset A as the image of
under addition and proves
theorem erdos_476 (p : ℕ) [Fact p.Prime] (A : Finset (ZMod p)) :
(restrictedSumset A).card ≥ min (2 * A.card - 3) pthe formal-conjectures statement; the natural-number subtraction truncates at
, which agrees with the statement's trivial cases. The main lemma
erdos_heilbronn_small treats the case by a two-variable
Combinatorial Nullstellensatz with the coefficient
, the computation behind Theorem 1 above;
whether the file follows the paper line by line was not checked. The file has
no sorry and no axiom declaration, and ends with
#print axioms Erdos476.erdos_476, whose output is recorded in a comment as
propext, Classical.choice, Quot.sound. The repository's owner announced
the file on the site's discussion thread on 31 December 2025 as a solution
different from the original, by the Combinatorial Nullstellensatz, giving its
final statement; the record page lists copies for five Mathlib versions. The
catalog's statement file for the problem (linked above at its commit of
2026-09-18; category research solved, sorry body) carries a formal_proof
attribute naming this file on the main branch, not a fixed commit, and the
community database lists the problem as proved in Lean, as of its last update
on 31 December 2025. Only the file at the linked commit is described. No
formalized evidence is listed: that evidence means Lean this corpus built
and audited, and no statement-fidelity review of the file exists.
Acceptance. Refereed publications: The American Mathematical Monthly 102
(1995), no. 3, 250--255, issued March 1995 (the date of this page), and
Journal of Number Theory 56 (1996), no. 2, 404--417, issued February 1996
(Crossref records, 2026-09-18 and 2026-10-07). The site's commentary
does not name these papers, so no reviewed evidence is listed. The
problem's standing rests on the original proof's page
(Dias da Silva and Hamidoune)
as well as on this one.