Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
The claim: for some there are infinitely many such that
for every with .
Since eventually exceeds any fixed multiple of
and , such an has no representation
with for any fixed , nor with
for any , which is the negative answer to
all three questions of
Problem 205; the problem page
spells out this reading, which none of the linked files writes. In the
site's discussion thread, Terence Tao proposed the square-root bound on
2026-01-11 as the strengthening of the negative answer posted that day
(Barreto–Leeham 2026),
and Boris Alexeev posted a Lean formalization of it the same day at 05:31
UTC, as a live Lean session loading the file src/v4.24.0 of Alexeev's
lean-proofs repository from its main branch, with the prime number
theorem's asymptotic for the -th prime admitted as an axiom. The first
two formalization links above pin that file to its commit of 05:26 UTC
the same day, the version the post showed; the file was revised minutes
later and again on 2026-02-08 and 2026-03-31, and both that commit and the
branch head declare nth_prime_asymp as an axiom. Later that day Nat
Sothanaphan posted a human-readable de-formalization of Alexeev's Lean
proof (the record link above) and wrote that they had checked everything by
hand. The construction takes, for , an integer by the Chinese
remainder theorem with , and
modulo a product of odd primes for each , so
that is divisible by primes when and by when
; the constructed are therefore even, and the thread and the
collection's statement file leave arbitrarily large odd counterexamples
open.
Depends on. Nothing in this wiki.
Acceptance. Reviewed: the site's curator, Thomas F. Bloom, labels the
problem DISPROVED (LEAN) and credits the quantified form of the negative
answer to Tao and Alexeev in the problem's commentary (last edited
2026-04-05), stating the square-root bound there as the result; Nat
Sothanaphan, in the site's discussion thread on 2026-01-11, posted a
human-readable version of Alexeev's Lean proof of the bound (the record
link above) and wrote that they had checked everything by hand. Tao's own
acceptance of the construction in the thread is not counted for this page,
since Tao is one of its claimants. No refereed publication exists, and the
only informal account is Sothanaphan's de-formalization, which no library
card digests, so the evidence is reviewed alone.
The written forms of the proof are Lean files, none built or audited by
this corpus: the plby/lean-proofs copy src/latest at the pinned
commit linked above (theorem not_erdos_205, no sorry, no axiom, whose
own #print axioms comment lists propext, Classical.choice,
Quot.sound, and which imports the PrimeNumberTheoremAnd project for the
prime asymptotic); its src/v4.29.1 copy, which the formal-conjectures
statement file names in a formal_proof attribute and whose header still
says "Conditional on: nth_prime_asymp" although its imports and axiom
comment match the src/latest copy; the earlier Jayyhk/erdos-lean
file linked above, which admits nth_prime_asymp as an axiom; and the same
repository's later file, which vendors a proof of it. The
problem page records the statements, congruences and axiom comments, and
the boundary difference (2 ^ k ≤ n in this claim against 2 ^ k < n in the
collection's variant, which matters only at powers of two, excluded by
). No file was built, kernel-checked or audited by this
corpus, and no statement-fidelity review exists, so no formalized
evidence is listed. The formal files name ChatGPT, Aristotle and Alexeev as
formal authors and van Doorn, Tao, Alexeev and ChatGPT as informal authors;
they declare themselves formalizations of the thread's solution and are
recorded as links on this page, not as a claim of their own.