Related papers: Features of a high school olympiad problem
Reverse Mathematics (RM hereafter) is a program in the foundations of mathematics founded by Friedman and developed extensively by Simpson and others. The aim of RM is to find the minimal axioms needed to prove a theorem of ordinary, i.e.…
In this note I give simple proofs of classical results of Euler, Legendre and Sylvester showing that for certain integers M there are no (or only a few) solutions of $x^3 + y^3 = M$, with $x$ and $y$ in $\mathbb{Q}$. The proofs all use a…
The aim of the present article is to explore the possibilities of representing positive integers as sums of other positive integers and highlight certain fundamental connections between their multiplicative and additive properties. In…
We consider the problem of counting the number of answers to a first-order formula on a finite structure. We present and study an extension of first-order logic in which algorithms for this counting problem can be naturally and conveniently…
In 1960, W. Sierpinski proved that there are infinitely many positive odd numbers $k$, such that for any positive integer $n$, $k\times2^n+1$ is a composite number. Such numbers are called "Sierpinski numbers". In this study, by using…
A one-to-one continuous function from a triangle to itself is defined that has both interesting number theoretic and analytic properties. This function is shown to be a natural generalization of the classical Minkowski ?(x) function. It is…
Given a computable sequence of natural numbers, it is a natural task to find a G\"odel number of a program that generates this sequence. It is easy to see that this problem is neither continuous nor computable. In algorithmic learning…
`Terquem's problem' is a name given in the twentieth century to the problem of enumerating certain integer sequences whose entries alternate in parity. In particular, this problem asks for the count of strictly increasing length $m$…
We consider the problem of approaching real numbers with rational numbers with prime denominator and with a single numerator allowed for each denominator. We obtain basic results, both probabilistic and deterministic, draw connections to…
In this article, we explore the notion of infinity by studying Cantor's contribution to this field. A brief history of set theory is given. As an example of infinity, we consider Hilbert's famous hotel. A graphical construction is used to…
It is a classical result of Mahler that for any rational number $\alpha$ > 1 which is not an integer and any real 0 < c < 1, the set of positive integers n such that $\alpha$ n < c n is necessarily finite. Here for any real x, x denotes the…
A famous theorem of Szemer\'edi asserts that any set of integers of positive upper density will contain arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions. In its full generality, we know of four types of arguments that can prove this theorem: the…
Let $n,d$, and $k$ be positive integers where $n$ and $d$ are coprime. Our two main results are Theorem 1. There is a partition of the infinite interval $[kd,\infty)$ of positive integers into a family of finite sets $X$ for which the sum…
It was noticed by Harel in [Har86] that "one can define $\Sigma_1^1$-complete versions of the well-known Post Correspondence Problem". We first give a complete proof of this result, showing that the infinite Post Correspondence Problem in a…
It is well known since A. J. Kempner's work that the series of the reciprocals of the positive integers whose the decimal representation does not contain any digit 9, is convergent. This result was extended by F. Irwin and others to deal…
In the article 'Ordinal Logics and the Characterizations of the Informal Concept of Proof', Georg Kreisel poses the problem of assigning unique notations to recursive ordinals, and additionally suggests that the methods which are developed…
We introduce the concept of Minkowski normality, a different type of normality for the regular continued fraction expansion. We use the ordering \[ \frac{1}{2},\quad \frac{1}{3}, \frac{2}{3},\quad \frac{1}{4}, \frac{3}{4},\frac{2}{5},…
Let, for r>=2, (m_r(n)),n>=0, be Moser sequence such that every nonnegative integer is the unique sum of the form s_k+rs_l. In this article we give an explicit decomposition formulas of such form and an unexpectedly simple recursion…
We introduce and study the number of tilings of unit height rectangles with irrational tiles. We prove that the class of sequences of these numbers coincides with the class of diagonals of N-rational generating functions and a class of…
A perfect number is a positive integer $N$ such that the sum of all the positive divisors of $N$ equals $2N$, denoted by $\sigma(N) = 2N$. The question of the existence of odd perfect numbers (OPNs) is one of the longest unsolved problems…