Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Claim. Let be the number of -element sets of positive integers whose reciprocals sum to , each counted once (the increasing -tuples with ). The manuscript Short Egyptian fractions of the OpenAI mathematics release (OpenAI, 25 September 2026; the release attributes it to an internal OpenAI model and names no individual author, and its README says that its manuscripts were produced by an internal OpenAI model and are at different stages of verification) states as its Corollary 1.2 that there are absolute constants and with
that is, . The lower half is the new content: it removes the from the recorded lower bound of Konyagin and of Elsholtz. The upper half was known, and the manuscript's own explicit bound is weaker than the Elsholtz–Planitzer bound the problem page records. The constants are not made explicit. The route: the manuscript's Theorem 1.1 (the accepted claim of Problem 304) applied to , for the product of the first odd primes, gives a distinct expansion of of length containing a denominator with at least divisors; splitting that denominator over its proper divisors gives about distinct expansions of one length, and an injective padding of the largest denominator reaches every larger length. The statement, its locators and a structural reading of the proof are on the result page of the source card, whose card records the release's provenance and attestations; the prose proof is recorded there at the level of its structure, with its steps unverified.
Depends on.
The release's Theorem 1.1
supplies the short expansion of ; in the Lean development
counting_double_log_order is proved from main_double_log_order, the
declaration that page records.
Covers. The double-exponential order of , the number of -element sets of positive integers with reciprocal sum : there are with for all large , so . This replaces the recorded lower bound ; the upper half was already known (Elsholtz–Planitzer). Not settled: an asymptotic formula, up to constant factors, or the constant in (the monograph's guess ).
Acceptance. The evidence is formalized. The release's Lean development at
the pinned revision declares, in
lean/OAI/NumberTheory/EgyptianFractions/Main.lean, the theorem
OAI.Problem337.counting_double_log_order, which states
with the quantifiers
, and the theorem
OAI.Problem337.one_expansions_finite_and_bounded, which proves for every
that the set of expansions is finite with and that
every denominator of a -term expansion of satisfies .
Here OneExpansions k is the set of strictly increasing tuples Fin k → ℕ
with entries at least and reciprocal sum exactly , which correspond one
to one with the -element sets the problem counts, and F k is its ncard;
the finiteness statement excludes the junk value of ncard on an infinite
set, and the lower bound with excludes it a second
time since Real.log 0 = 0. The corpus's verification built both declarations
and checked their axioms, which are propext, Classical.choice and
Quot.sound only, and the comparator challenge
lean/ComparatorChallenges/EgyptianFractions.lean of the release pins these
statements and definitions, with which the solution module's fingerprints were
identical. The namespace Problem337 is the release's internal label and is
unrelated to catalog Problem 337.
The claim is partial because the problem asks for good estimates and the declaration fixes only the order of the double logarithm: no asymptotic formula, no estimate of up to constant factors and no value of the constant in (the monograph's guess would mean a slope tending to ) follows from it. No other acceptance evidence was found on 2026-10-07: the manuscript was not refereed and had no arXiv version, no outside review of it was recorded, and the site's page showed the label OPEN (last edited 27 September 2025) with no proof claim on its tab on 2026-10-07.