Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Claim. There are five points in the plane, no three on a line and no four
on a circle, determining four distinct distances that occur , , and
times: the instance of
Problem 217, answered yes. The
construction is described by Erdős in his 1983 lecture transcript
Combinatorial problems in geometry, Math. Chronicle 12 (1983), 35–54, p. 54
(the paper link; carded as
erdos_1983_combinatorial_problems_geometry),
where he credits it to Pomerance and says it corrected his own belief that no
example with more than four points exists. Take a unit equilateral triangle
, its circumcenter , and a point on the unit circle about with
. The unit distance occurs four times (, , , ), the
circumradius three times (, , ), the distance
twice and once; the transcript states that no three of the points are
collinear and no four concyclic. Either of the two choices of works.
Covers. The instance . The property of the problem does not pass to subsets, so nothing is claimed for any other . The transcript adds that a Hungarian high-school student had found a six-point example, unpublished; the instances , and are settled on [[problems/distance_problems/E0217/claims/1989_01_01_palasti|Palásti's six-point]], seven-point and eight-point claim pages.
Depends on. Nothing in this wiki.
Standing. Claimed. The construction's only publication is Erdős's lecture transcript, not a refereed paper by the claimant, and the elementary check of its distances is not an outside review; the site's remarks credit the example to Pomerance on a problem the site labels OPEN, which is commentary and not acceptance.