English

Resolution of Erd\H{o}s Problem #728: a writeup of Aristotle's Lean proof

Number Theory 2026-01-27 v5

Abstract

We provide a writeup of a resolution of Erd\H{o}s Problem #728; this is the first Erd\H{o}s problem (a problem proposed by Paul Erd\H{o}s which has been collected in the Erd\H{o}s Problems website) regarded as fully resolved autonomously by an AI system. The system in question is a combination of GPT-5.2 Pro by OpenAI and Aristotle by Harmonic, operated by Kevin Barreto. The final result of the system is a formal proof written in Lean, which we translate to informal mathematics in the present writeup for wider accessibility. The proved result is as follows. We show a logarithmic-gap phenomenon regarding factorial divisibility: For any constants 0<C1<C20<C_1<C_2 and 0<ε<1/20 < \varepsilon < 1/2 there exist infinitely many triples (a,b,n)N3(a,b,n)\in\mathbb N^3 with εna,b(1ε)n\varepsilon n \le a,b \le (1-\varepsilon)n such that a!b!n!(a+bn)!andC1logn<a+bn<C2logn. a!\,b!\mid n!\,(a+b-n)!\qquad\text{and}\qquad C_1\log n < a+b-n < C_2\log n. The argument reduces this to a binomial divisibility (m+kk)(2mm)\binom{m+k}{k}\mid\binom{2m}{m} and studies it prime-by-prime. By Kummer's theorem, νp(2mm)\nu_p\binom{2m}{m} translates into a carry count for doubling mm in base pp. We then employ a counting argument to find, in each scale [M,2M][M,2M], an integer mm whose base-pp expansions simultaneously force many carries when doubling mm, for every prime p2kp\le 2k, while avoiding the rare event that one of m+1,,m+km+1,\dots,m+k is divisible by an unusually high power of pp. These "carry-rich but spike-free" choices of mm force the needed pp-adic inequalities and the divisibility. The overall strategy is similar to results regarding divisors of (2nn)\binom{2n}{n} studied earlier by Erd\H{o}s and by Pomerance.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.07421,
  title  = {Resolution of Erd\H{o}s Problem #728: a writeup of Aristotle's Lean proof},
  author = {Nat Sothanaphan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.07421},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

20 pages, 1 figure