English

On Sets with More Products than Quotients

Number Theory 2020-01-16 v3

Abstract

Given a finite set AR\{0}A\subset \mathbb{R}\backslash \{0\}, define \begin{align*}&A\cdot A \ =\ \{a_i\cdot a_j\,|\, a_i,a_j\in A\},\\ &A/A \ =\ \{a_i/a_j\,|\,a_i,a_j\in A\},\\ &A + A \ =\ \{a_i + a_j\,|\, a_i,a_j\in A\},\\ &A - A \ =\ \{a_i - a_j\,|\,a_i,a_j\in A\}.\end{align*} The set AA is said to be MPTQ (more product than quotient) if AA>A/A|A\cdot A|>|A/A| and MSTD (more sum than difference) if A+A>AA|A + A|>|A - A|. Since multiplication and addition are commutative while division and subtraction are not, it is natural to think that MPTQ and MSTD sets are very rare. However, they do exist. This paper first shows an efficient search for MPTQ subsets of {1,2,,n}\{1,2,\ldots,n\} and proves that as nn\rightarrow \infty, the proportion of MPTQ subsets approaches 00. Next, we prove that MPTQ sets of positive numbers must have at least 88 elements, while MPTQ sets of both negative and positive numbers must have at least 55 elements. Finally, we investigate several sequences that do not have MPTQ subsets.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1908.00057,
  title  = {On Sets with More Products than Quotients},
  author = {Hung Viet Chu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.00057},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

14 pages, to appear in Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics

R2 v1 2026-06-23T10:36:37.154Z