Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
The doubling law for distinct totient values
evidence/: Independent focused reviews and a distinct grade of the reconstruction pages of the Problem 416 folder; no executable evidence and no tier.
kruer_kohlmeyer_lemma_2_1_reconstruction: Reconstructs the finite counting inequality that bounds the defect of a count from twice its half-scale count by the pair imbalance, the missing values and the excess representations of any finite family mapping into it.
kruer_kohlmeyer_lemma_5_1_reconstruction: Reconstructs the elementary step that turns an eventual bound on |V(2x) - 2V(x)| relative to V(2x) into a bound on |V(2x)/V(x) - 2|, and records why the cap delta <= 1/2 is needed.
kruer_kohlmeyer_theorem_1_1_reconstruction: Reconstructs the deduction of V(2x)/V(x) -> 2 from the write-up's Proposition 4.1, with the power-cutoff estimate and the passage to the quotient written out; the proposition itself is stated as an imported premise whose proof exists only in the accepted Lean file.
zeraoulia_theorem_1_1_reconstruction: Reconstructs the preprint's unconditional theorem that, for each fixed c > 1, c is a limit point of V(cn)/V(n) and the set of limit points is a closed interval, from Ford's order-of-magnitude theorem, exact telescoping and the unit jumps of V; the width of the interval is not controlled.
This folder holds author-recorded reconstructions of the two 2026 arguments on the first question of Problem 416: does , where counts the integers that are values of Euler's function? The reconstruction of the Kruer–Kohlmeyer write-up (library card) is split across Lemma 2.1, the finite counting inequality, Lemma 5.1, relative error controls the quotient, and Theorem 1.1, the doubling law deduced from the write-up's Proposition 4.1, which that page states as an imported premise whose proof exists only in the accepted Lean file. The reconstruction of the unconditional part of Zeraoulia's preprint (library card) is Theorem 1.1 of the preprint: for every fixed , is a limit point of and the set of limit points is a closed interval. Every page is author-recorded, is not an independent review, changes no status and assigns no tier.
Where things stand
Reviewed. Each reconstruction page was independently reviewed as it stood on 2026-09-28T05:03:27Z by a focused review filed under evidence/verify/, with a distinct grade of the four reports. As the grade records them, the verdicts are: Lemma 2.1, fidelity faithful with correction C1 and argument sound; Lemma 5.1, fidelity faithful and argument sound, its sentence on the cap corrected by C2; Theorem 1.1, fidelity faithful with corrections C3 and C4 and argument sound as an implication from Proposition 4.1, Chebyshev's bound and the two lemmas; Theorem 1.1 of the preprint, fidelity faithful with corrections C5–C7 and argument sound, the refutation charge having failed. No report was graded void. The seven corrections C1–C7 were applied, so the current text of each page differs from the reviewed text at the places the grade names. No tier is assigned and the problem's status is unchanged. After the review, line wrapping was normalized on the reconstruction pages; no formula or sentence changed.
First question, . Answered yes by the Lean proof that the bounty site Conjectures.io accepted in September 2026; the acceptance record, its limits and the status search are on the problem page. The prose part of the argument is reconstructed here in full: the finite counting inequality, the power-cutoff estimate, the deduction of the relative-error bound from Proposition 4.1, and the passage to the quotient. Proposition 4.1, that for each there is a family of prime–core pairs whose missing values, repeated representations and imbalance between and are small, has no prose proof in any held source; the Theorem 1.1 page states it as an imported premise with its Lean pointers and lists what a prose proof would have to supply. That is the one gap between these pages and a complete prose proof of the doubling law.
General . The preprint's unconditional theorem is reconstructed: from Ford's Theorem 1, exact telescoping and the unit jumps of , the quotient has among its limit points and its cluster set is the closed interval between its limit inferior and limit superior. The preprint's argument does not bound the width; the general-scale law is the OpenAI release's Theorem 2.1, recorded on the problem page.
Second question, an asymptotic formula. Its standing, a pending claim from the OpenAI release, is recorded on the problem page. Ford's Theorem 1 gives up to a factor , and Ford writes that the method falls short of .
Mechanism. Both sources rest on being a nondecreasing integer count with unit jumps and , so that adjacent quotients differ by and bounded-ratio information propagates through exact telescoping; the write-up adds the arithmetic input that almost every totient value is for a subpower core and a top prime , so that prime counting at two scales balances the pair counts.