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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. Every prime nn coprime to 120120120120 that is not congruent modulo 120120120120 to one of the 198198 residues of the paper's Table 2 satisfies Rosati's condition (2) or (3), so that 4/n=1/x+1/y+1/z4/n=1/x+1/y+1/z has a solution in positive integers. This is the outcome of the first algorithm of D. G. Terzi, On a conjecture by Erdös-Straus, BIT 11 (1971), 212--216, received 23 September 1970, the date this page carries: the abstract (p. 212) states it for primes, and congruence (9) with Table 2 (p. 214) lists the 198198 classes left open. The paper allows repeated terms; the Formulation of Problem 242 records how a representation becomes one with three distinct terms.

Covers. The primes coprime to 120120120120 outside the 198198 classes, and, since a representation for a prime scales to one for every multiple of it, every n>2n>2 with such a prime factor. The page does not cover a composite nn outside the 198198 classes whose prime factors all lie inside them: the classes are not closed under multiplication, for example 66049⋅30241≡32449(mod120120)66049\cdot30241\equiv32449\pmod{120120} with 6604966049 and 3024130241 in Table 2 and 3244932449 not. The site's commentary, which credits Terzi with every nn outside the classes, therefore says more than the paper's statement for primes. Nor does the page cover the paper's verification of all n≤108n\le10^8 (p. 215), an author's report of a computation that [ElTa13] finds incomplete and that the problem page records under Finite verification.

Depends on. No page of this wiki.

Acceptance. Refereed: BIT 11 (1971). The site labels the problem FALSIFIABLE, an open problem, so its commentary's credit to Terzi is no reviewed evidence. The statement and Table 2 are recorded on the library's result page; the algorithm is recorded in outline only, and the proof is not independently reviewed.