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

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Claim. The answer to Problem 1010 is yes: for k<⌊n/2⌋k<\lfloor n/2\rfloor, every nn-vertex graph with ⌊n2/4⌋+k\lfloor n^2/4\rfloor+k edges has at least k⌊n/2⌋k\lfloor n/2\rfloor triangles. The claimants are L. Lovász and M. Simonovits, and the result has two postings. The first is On the number of complete subgraphs of a graph, Proc. Fifth British Combinatorial Conference (Aberdeen 1975), Congressus Numerantium XV (1976), 431--441, which is not held (the second author's page copy was unavailable on 2026-09-18, and Crossref has no record); its year gives this page's date, the day not being recorded. The second is On the number of complete subgraphs of a graph II, Studies in Pure Mathematics: To the Memory of Paul Turán, Birkhäuser (1983), 459--495, described on its card (no file is held) and read on the page images of the scan the card names. The chapter's abstract (p. 459) says that its results "contain the proof of the longstanding conjecture of P. Erdős that a graph GnG^n with [n2/4]+k[n^2/4]+k edges contains at least k[n/2]k[n/2] triangles if k<n/2k<n/2", and its p. 460 attributes the triangle case to the 1976 paper ("For p=3p=3 the proof of this was given in [5]").

The theorem behind the sentence is Theorem 4 (p. 463), in the corpus's words: let EE be the number of edges of the Turán graph Tn,p−1T^{n,p-1} plus kk, with k<[n/(p−1)]k<[n/(p-1)]; then among the graphs with nn vertices and EE edges, one with the fewest copies of KpK_p is the Turán graph with kk edges added inside a largest class (for p>3p>3 the only one, for p=3p=3 one of them). At p=3p=3 the added edges lie inside one side of a complete bipartite graph, each lies in one triangle with every vertex of the other side, and the added edges form no triangle, so this graph has exactly k⌊n/2⌋k\lfloor n/2\rfloor triangles (a one-line count made on the problem page, not in the chapter), which is the bound asked for. Two qualifications travel with the theorem: the chapter fixes pp and dd and takes nn large relative to them (p. 461), and the derivation of Theorem 4 from Theorem 3 (p. 463) uses the step "if nn is sufficiently large" without a threshold, so the printed statement carries an unstated largeness assumption. Erdős's own paper of 1962 proves the bound for t<c1n/2t<c_1n/2 (Theorem; an accepted partial claim, 1962_03_01_erdos) and records Rademacher's case t=1t=1 for even nn; the chapter's Theorem A restates Erdős's theorem.

Depends on. Nothing in this wiki; the chapter's own statements and the one-line triangle count are the whole argument.

Acceptance. The reviewed evidence is documented acceptance by the site's curator, Thomas Bloom, who labels the problem PROVED and names the 1976 paper as one of its two independent proofs, with the community database in agreement (it lists the problem as proved as of its last update, 10 September 2025), and the publication of the general theorem in an edited memorial volume by Birkhäuser in 1983 (Crossref record). No referee record is visible for a volume chapter and the proceedings paper is not held, so refereed is not listed. The one comment in the site's thread (8 March 2026) holds that the problem was settled in the 1983 chapter rather than in the 1976 paper; the chapter's own attribution says otherwise, and without the 1976 text the point stays open. Read depth: the abstract, Theorem A, Problem 3 and Theorems 1 to 4 were read at their statements; the derivation of Theorem 4 from Theorem 3 was read for structure; the proof of Theorem 3 (Section 5, pp. 471--495) was not read, and nothing is independently reviewed. The site also credits an independent proof by Nikiforov and Khadzhiivanov, whose text has not been seen. An independent Lean proof of the statement for every nn, with no largeness assumption, is a pending claim of its own (2026_08_26_alexeev).