Related papers: Revisiting Unit Fractions That Sum To 1

This paper provides bounds for the number of terms, denoted by $f$, of a harmonic sum with the condition that it starts from any arbitrary unit fraction $\frac{1}{m}$, $m > 1$, until another unit fraction $\frac{1}{m+f-1}$ such that the sum…

In 1978, Allan.Wm.Johnson obtained an example of the representation of 1 by the sum of reciprocals of the product of two distinct prime numbers. His example has 48 terms [1], and we had no examples which have less than 48 terms until now.…

We prove new upper bounds on the number of representations of rational numbers $\frac{m}{n}$ as a sum of $4$ unit fractions, giving five different regions, depending on the size of $m$ in terms of $n$. In particular, we improve the most…

The following magic trick is at the center of this paper. While the audience writes the first ten terms of a Fibonacci-like sequence (the sequence following the same recursion as the Fibonacci sequence), the magician calculates the sum of…

We solve an elementary number theory problem on sums of fractional parts, using methods from group theory. We apply our result to deduce the finiteness of certain monodromy representations.

What is the maximum number of $r$-term sums admitting rational values in $n$-element sets of irrational numbers? We determine the maximum when $r<4$ or $r\geq n/2$ and also in case when we drop the condition on the number of summands. It…

In this paper, we provide an upper bound for the number of one-element commutation classes of a permutation, that is, the number of reduced words in which no commutation can be applied. Using this upper bound, we prove a conjecture that…

In 1963, Graham proved that all integers greater than 77 (but not 77 itself) can be partitioned into distinct positive integers whose reciprocals sum to 1. He further conjectured that for any sufficiently large integer, it can be…

We consider series of the form $$ \frac{p}{q} +\sum_{j=2}^\infty \frac{1}{x_j}, $$ where $x_1=q$ and the integer sequence $(x_n)$ satisfies a certain non-autonomous recurrence of second order, which entails that $x_n|x_{n+1}$ for $n\geq 1$.…

We prove new upper bounds for the number of representations of an arbitrary rational number as a sum of three unit fractions. In particular, for fixed $m$ there are at most $\mathcal{O}_{\epsilon}(n^{3/5+\epsilon})$ solutions of…

We present an algorithm for computing all the solutions in not necessarily distinct integers to the decomposition of the unit into a sum of unit fractions with denominators $p^a.q^b$ where $p$ and $q$ are two distinct primes, each appearing…

In this paper, we prove two results related to the solutions of norm form equations. Firstly, we give a finiteness result for sums of terms of linear recurrence sequences appearing in the coordinates of solutions of norm form equations.…

Starting from a small number of well-motivated axioms, we derive a unique definition of sums with a noninteger number of addends. These "fractional sums" have properties that generalize well-known classical sum identities in a natural way.…

Erd\H{o}s and Graham proposed to determine the number of subsets $S \subseteq \left\{1,2,\dots,n\right\}$ with $\sum_{s \in S} 1/s = 1$ and asked, among other things, whether that number could be as large as $2^{n - o(n)}$. We show that the…

We consider the problem of globally minimizing the sum of many rational functions over a given compact semialgebraic set. The number of terms can be large (10 to 100), the degree of each term should be small (up to 10), and the number of…

Let $A\subset \mathbb{N}^{n}$ be an $r$-wise $s$-union family, that is, a family of sequences with $n$ components of non-negative integers such that for any $r$ sequences in $A$ the total sum of the maximum of each component in those…

Let $S= \{ p_1, \ldots, p_s\}$ be a finite, non-empty set of distinct prime numbers and $(U_{n})_{n \geq 0}$ be a linear recurrence sequence of integers of order $r$. For any positive integer $k,$ we define $(U_j^{(k)})_{j\geq 1}$ an…

We consider the equation $[p_{1}^{c}] + [p_{2}^{c}] + [p_{3}^{c}] = N$, where $N$ is a sufficiently large integer, and prove that if $1 < c < \frac{17}{16}$, then it has a solution in prime numbers $p_{1}$, $p_{2}$, $p_{3}$ such that each…

In this paper we continue our study, begun in part I, of the exceptional set of integers, not restricted by elementary congruence conditions, which cannot be represented as sums of three or four squares of primes. We correct a serious…

We study the number of values taken by the sums $\sum_{i=u}^{v-1} a_i$, where $a_1,a_2,\dots,a_n$ is a permutation of $1,2,\dots,n$ and $1 \leq u < v \leq n+1$. In particular, we show that for a random choice of a permutation, with high…