English

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 nn-term Egyptian underapproximation of almost every positive number for sufficiently large nn gets constructed in a greedy manner, i.e., from the best (n1)(n-1)-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"

R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:01:24.891Z