Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Claim. Let be the largest size of a set carrying signs whose signed reciprocals sum to zero while no nonempty proper subset of sums to zero, as Problem 319 defines it. The site's commentary credits Sarosh Adenwalla with the observation that
follows from the Main Theorem of Croot's paper On unit fractions with denominators in short intervals, Acta Arith. 99 (2001), no. 2, 99--114, whose card is croot_1999_unit_fractions_denominators_short_intervals. In outline: Croot's theorem gives a set of integers in with ; all the integers of that interval have reciprocal sum and each one omitted removes at least , so ; and the signs and for make a signed zero-sum set. The problem page writes out the minimality check: a proper nonempty subset of either omits , so its signed sum is negative, or contains and misses some element of , so its signed sum is positive.
Covers. The lower bound only. With the trivial upper bound it gives the order , which answers the -order variant posed in the formal-conjectures statement file, but it does not determine the asymptotic of : the limit of , if it exists, is left anywhere in . The claim's value is proved because the result proves a bound.
Standing. Claimed. The result exists only as the site's commentary: no
written source by Adenwalla states it, and it has no arXiv version, no
journal record, no formalization and no independent review. The commentary
credits it to Adenwalla, but the site labels the problem OPEN (no
last-edited stamp; OPEN on 2026-10-07) and lists no parts, so the credit is
not an acceptance and no reviewed evidence is listed. Croot's theorem
itself is refereed, but the deduction is not published. The claim is dated
by the earliest archived copy of the site's page that carries the remark,
that of 15 September 2025 (the second link); the archived copy of 19 June
2024 carries the problem without commentary. The pending
density-one claim of 16 July 2026
would lift this bound to .
Depends on. Croot's Main Theorem.