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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 728 is yes, and much more: the set of integers mm such that

(m+kk)  ∣  (2mm)for every 1≤k≤exp⁡(0.8log⁡m)\binom{m+k}{k}\;\Big|\;\binom{2m}{m} \qquad\text{for every }1\le k\le\exp\bigl(0.8\sqrt{\log m}\bigr)

has asymptotic density one. This is Theorem 2 of Carl Pomerance, Remarks on the middle binomial coefficient, Integers 26 (2026), #A47, carded at Pomerance 2026 (received 2026-01-15, published 2026-04-03). With n=2mn=2m, b=mb=m and a=m+ka=m+k the divisibility reads a! b!∣n! (a+b−n)!a!\,b!\mid n!\,(a+b-n)! and a+b−n=ka+b-n=k, so for any such mm and any kk between Clog⁡nC\log n and exp⁡(0.8log⁡m)\exp(0.8\sqrt{\log m}) the triple (a,b,n)(a,b,n) has a,b≥εna,b\ge\varepsilon n for every ε≤1/2\varepsilon\le1/2, a,b≤(1−ε)na,b\le(1-\varepsilon)n once mm is large, and a+b>n+Clog⁡na+b>n+C\log n. Every CC is covered, and the gap a+b−na+b-n may be taken as large as exp⁡(0.8log⁡m)\exp(0.8\sqrt{\log m}); the paper remarks that 0.80.8 may be replaced by any constant below log⁡2\sqrt{\log2}. The paper's Theorem 1 is the stronger divisibility (m+1)⋯(m+k)∣(2mm)(m+1)\cdots(m+k)\mid\binom{2m}{m}, for almost all mm and every k≤ηlog⁡mk\le\eta\log m with η<1/log⁡4\eta<1/\log4; the note remarks, without proof, that 1/log⁡41/\log4 is optimal, and Proposition 1 in the appendix of Sothanaphan's writeup (on the claim page Barreto 2026) proves that sharpness. The paper itself states its theorems as results on the middle binomial coefficient and says they may be of interest for the recent AI work on an Erdős problem; the translation to the problem's statement is the change of variables above, which is this page's own step and is not formalized.

The argument. The method is the one of Pomerance's earlier paper Pomerance 2015 (Amer. Math. Monthly 122 (2015)), which proved that m+k∣(2mm)m+k\mid\binom{2m}{m} for almost all mm at each fixed k≥1k\ge1: Kummer's theorem turns νp(2mm)\nu_p\binom{2m}{m} into a carry count in base pp, binomial-distribution estimates show that almost every mm has many carries for every prime pp up to the relevant range (the note's Lemma 1 bounds the normalized carry count αp(m)=νp(2mm)/(log⁡m/log⁡p)\alpha_p(m)=\nu_p\binom{2m}{m}/(\log m/\log p) for almost all mm: α2=1/2+o(1)\alpha_2=1/2+o(1), α3≥34/81+o(1)\alpha_3\ge34/81+o(1) by counting base-3 carries inside base-27 digits, and αp≥0.39\alpha_p\ge0.39 for 3<p<2log⁡m3<p<2\log m because each base-pp digit at least p/2p/2 forces a carry; for Theorem 2 its Lemma 4 gives more than D/log⁡DD/\log D carries, where DD is the number of base-pp digits), the elementary bound νp(m+kk)≤max⁡1≤i≤kνp(m+i)\nu_p\binom{m+k}{k}\le\max_{1\le i\le k}\nu_p(m+i) controls the other side, and the exceptional mm are counted away. The note extends the 2015 method and was written after a participant in the Problem 729 thread asked Pomerance, on 2026-01-10, about the AI-generated proof on the claim page Barreto 2026; the reply relayed on 2026-01-11 was that the ideas of the 2015 paper give the result and that no printed source was known. Only the 2015 method came before the AI-generated proof, and Sothanaphan's writeup of that proof records the two arguments as very similar. A first version of the note, titled A remark on the middle binomial coefficient, was announced in the site's thread on 2026-01-14, the date of this page; a gap in its Lemma 2.1 (the carry frequency for p=3p=3) was pointed out in the thread on 2026-01-23 and repaired in the revision of 2026-01-27 linked above, whose constants the published paper keeps.

Formalization. The Lean file Erdos728p.lean in Boris Alexeev's repository of formalized Erdős problems, linked above at the pinned commits of its two Lean versions, formalizes Pomerance's density theorems: the theorems of both versions state that the bad sets for Theorems 1 and 2 of the note have density zero, named theorem_1_1 and theorem_1_2 in the older version and erdos_728 and erdos_728_intrinsic in the current one. The current version carries the header naming Pomerance as the informal author and Aristotle and Alexeev as the formal authors, and the formal-conjectures statement file for the problem names this file as the problem's formal proof. Neither version quantifies over the problem's triples (a,b,n)(a,b,n); the step from Theorem 2 to them is the change of variables above, which is not formalized. The file was announced in the thread on 2026-01-22 and, as that announcement says, its production fed back into the note's constants. This corpus has not built or audited it, so the page lists no formalized evidence.

Depends on. No page of this wiki.

Acceptance. The paper appeared in Integers, a refereed journal, which the page lists as refereed; its acknowledgments thank four mathematicians for comments and for pointing out errors. The site's curator credits Barreto and ChatGPT-5.2 for the problem's resolution and does not mention this paper, so no reviewed evidence is listed.