Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Claim. Theorem 2 of Erdős and Kaplansky's paper states that the number of Latin rectangles with labeled rows, columns and symbols satisfies
as whenever for a fixed . Theorem 1 is the one-row step: in that range the number of rows that extend a given rectangle is up to a relative error , and the asymptotic follows by multiplying the steps. The method is a double inclusion-exclusion, over the columns in which a candidate row clashes with the rectangle and over repeated pairs of equal symbols. The authors note that appears to be a natural boundary of the method and say they believe the actual break occurs at ; the sketched expansion of Section 4 suggests, without proof, that the formula ceases to be valid at about . Yamamoto proved the formula for every . The site records the theorem with its range under [ErKa46].
Covers. The asymptotic count for every . It says nothing about larger , so Problem 725, which asks for an asymptotic formula without restricting , is not settled by it.
Acceptance. Refereed: Amer. J. Math. 68 (1946), no. 2, 230–236; the
issue is dated April 1946, and the page is dated to the first day of that
month. The site's curator records the theorem under [ErKa46] while labeling
the problem OPEN, which credits the partial result without settling the
problem, so the page lists no reviewed evidence. The library card records
the paper's theorems; the proof has not been reconstructed or independently
reviewed in this corpus.