Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Claim. Let be a real sequence with such that the number of is for some fixed . Then for almost all the sequence is uniformly distributed relative to : the position of within the gap that contains it, scaled to , is uniformly distributed. This is the deduction (9) that follows the Theorem of Davenport and Erdős (p. 4). The Theorem itself counts the multiples of that fall into a sparse union of non-overlapping intervals : writing for the total length of the intervals starting below and for the number of with in the union, if and at most intervals start below , then for almost all ; taking the lower -parts of the gaps of as the intervals, for each , gives (9). No monotonicity of the gaps is assumed. The counting condition is the case in which the site's commentary and Schmidt's introduction state the theorem (at most terms below gives , and conversely). The Theorem and (9) are compiled on the result page theorem; the digest is on the card davenport_1963_theorem_uniform_distribution.
Covers. The corrected Statement of Problem 492 for every real sequence tending to infinity with and at most terms below for some fixed : for each such sequence is uniformly distributed in for almost all . An infinite set of positive integers has at most terms below , so the case contains every such set and answers the site's wording, with , yes; the problem page's Notes credit it for that. The problem as a whole is answered no on Schmidt's page, by a sequence whose gaps tend to zero; by the two theorems together, for every its number of terms below is not (an authored deduction).
Acceptance. Refereed: H. Davenport and P. Erdős, A theorem on uniform
distribution, Magyar Tud. Akad. Mat. Kutató Int. Közl. 8 (1963), 3--11.
The publication record carries no finer date than the year, so the page is
named by its first day. The site's curator credits the paper, in the
problem's commentary, with the case , but the
site's label DISPROVED rests on Schmidt's theorem, so the credit is not an
acceptance of this case and no reviewed evidence is listed. Schmidt's
1969 introduction also attests the theorem, and no source read disputes it.
The proof (pp. 5--10) is not independently reviewed here.
Depends on. Nothing on the wiki; the result rests on the refereed paper linked above.