Wiki
Wiki

Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.

Updated


Claim. The answer to Problem 806 is yes: for all large nn, every A⊆{1,…,n}A\subseteq\{1,\ldots,n\} with ∣A∣≤n1/2|A|\le n^{1/2} lies in B+BB+B for some B⊂ZB\subset\mathbb Z with ∣B∣≤100 n1/2log⁡log⁡n/log⁡n=o(n1/2)|B|\le100\,n^{1/2}\log\log n/\log n=o(n^{1/2}). The claimed result is Theorem 1.4 of N. Alon, B. Bukh and B. Sudakov, Discrete Kakeya-type problems and small bases: a group of order nn containing a non-doubling set XX (one with ∣XX∣≤3∣X∣|XX|\le3|X|) of size between nlog⁡2n\sqrt n\log^2n and nlog⁡10n\sqrt n\log^{10}n satisfies the EN-condition, that every subset of at most n\sqrt n elements has a basis of at most 50nlog⁡log⁡n/log⁡n50\sqrt n\log\log n/\log n elements. Cyclic groups qualify by Corollary 1.5(a), every solvable group satisfies the condition, and the paper's reduction lifts a basis B′B' of A mod nA\bmod n in Z/nZ\mathbb Z/n\mathbb Z to the basis B′∪(B′−n)B'\cup(B'-n) of AA in Z\mathbb Z at the cost of a factor 22. The order is sharp up to constants: Erdős and Newman's remark that most sets of type (n,n2)(n,n^2) need a basis of size c nlog⁡log⁡n/log⁡nc\,n\log\log n/\log n, which the paper restates for every finite group. The problem page's Formulation records that the site's question is Erdős and Newman's closing question with N=n2N=n^2, and that the theorem covers the site's ∣A∣≤n1/2|A|\le n^{1/2} directly. Result page Theorem 1.4; library home alon_2009_discrete_kakeya_type_problems_small_bases (the edition read is the authors' version from Alon's publication list; the definitions, Theorem 1.4, Corollary 1.5 and the reduction claims checked, the proofs read for structure and not checked step by step, as the problem page records).

Depends on. Theorem 1.4 of the paper, the library's result page; the integer case rests on it, with the paper's Theorem 1.2 (small kk-universal sets for non-doubling sets) and Lemma 3.1, applied to Z/nZ\mathbb Z/n\mathbb Z either through a non-doubling interval or through Lemma 3.3 for solvable groups (p. 9); the Feit--Thompson theorem enters only the odd-order clause of Corollary 1.5 and is not needed here.

Acceptance. Refereed: Israel J. Math. 174 (2009), no. 1, 285--301, doi:10.1007/s11856-009-0115-9; the Crossref record dates the issue to November 2009 without a day. The arXiv preprint 0711.1604 was submitted 10 November 2007, which names this page. Reviewed: the site's curator, Thomas Bloom, credits the resolution to Alon, Bukh and Sudakov in the problem page's commentary and labels the problem PROVED (label as of 2026-10-07; no last-edited date); its discussion thread and proof-claim tab were empty, and the community database lists the problem proved as of its entry's last update of 31 August 2025, which does not date any change of state. The acceptance rests on the publication and the curator's credit, not on any review of this project's own.

Formalization. Not counted as evidence: the file Erdos806.lean in Boris Alexeev's lean-proofs repository, linked above at its commit of 15 September 2026, declares itself a Lean formalization of a solution to Problem 806 with Alon, Bukh and Sudakov as informal authors and Codex and GPT-5.6 Sol as formal authors. Its theorem erdos_806 states that for every ε>0\varepsilon>0 and all large nn, every A⊆{1,…,n}A\subseteq\{1,\ldots,n\} with ∣A∣≤n|A|\le\sqrt n lies in B+BB+B for some finite B⊂ZB\subset\mathbb Z with ∣B∣≤εn|B|\le\varepsilon\sqrt n; its header says that it formalizes the authors' explicit base-qq universal-set construction (the paper's proof of Theorem 1.4 uses instead the random construction of Theorem 1.2, a remark of this page, not of the header), and the file contains no sorry. The formal-conjectures statement file ErdosProblems/806.lean, added on 2026-09-20 and linked above at a pinned commit, names this file as the formal proof of its own sorry theorem. This corpus has not built or audited the file, and the fidelity of the formal statement to the site's question is not reviewed in this corpus, so no formalized evidence is listed; the standing rests on the refereed paper.