English

Visualizing the Sum-Product Conjecture

Number Theory 2025-03-18 v2 Combinatorics

Abstract

Let SPP(n)SPP(n) be the set {(A+A,AA):AN,A=n}\left\{\big(|A+A|,|A A|\big) : A\subseteq {\mathbb N}, |A|=n\right\} of sum-product pairs, where A+AA+A is the sumset {a+b:a,bA}\{a+b : a,b\in A\} and AAA A is the product set {ab:a,bA}\{ab:a,b\in A\}. We construct a dataset consisting of 1162868 sets whose sum-product pairs are at least 84%84\% of SPP(n)SPP(n) for each n32n\le 32. Notably, we do **not** see evidence in favor of Erd\H{o}s's Sum-Product Conjecture in our dataset. For n6n\le 6, we prove the exact value of SPP(n)SPP(n). We include a number of conjectures, open problems, and observations motivated by this dataset, a large number of color visualizations.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2411.08139,
  title  = {Visualizing the Sum-Product Conjecture},
  author = {Kevin O'Bryant},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.08139},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

28 pages, many color images

R2 v1 2026-06-28T19:57:38.966Z