On eventually greedy best underapproximations by Egyptian fractions
Number Theory
2024-11-25 v3 Classical Analysis and ODEs
Combinatorics
Abstract
Erd\H{o}s and Graham found it conceivable that the best -term Egyptian underapproximation of almost every positive number for sufficiently large gets constructed in a greedy manner, i.e., from the best -term Egyptian underapproximation. We show that the opposite is true: the set of real numbers with this property has Lebesgue measure zero. [This note solves Problem 206 on Bloom's website "Erd\H{o}s problems".]
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2406.07218,
title = {On eventually greedy best underapproximations by Egyptian fractions},
author = {Vjekoslav Kovač},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.07218},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
7 pages; v2 corrects the history of the claim for rational numbers; v3 incorporates referee's suggestions. The author is grateful to Richard Green for discussing the paper and its background in the popular newsletter "A Piece of the Pi: mathematics explained"