Related papers: Forbidden Sidon subsets of perfect difference sets…
Let $S_k(m):=1^k+2^k+\cdots+(m-1)^k$ denote a power sum. In 2011 Bernd Kellner formulated the conjecture that for $m\ge 4$ the ratio $S_k(m+1)/S_k(m)$ of two consecutive power sums is never an integer. We will develop some techniques that…
One way of suggesting that an NP problem may not be NP-complete is to show that it is in the class UP. We suggest an analogous new approach---weaker in strength of evidence but more broadly applicable---to suggesting that concrete~NP…
In this paper, we prove that a set of $N$ points in ${\bf R}^2$ has at least $c{N \over \log N}$ distinct distances, thus obtaining the sharp exponent in a problem of Erd\"os. We follow the set-up of Elekes and Sharir which, in the spirit…
In 1965 Erd\H{o}s conjectured that the number of edges in k-uniform hypergraphs on n vertices in which the largest matching has s edges is maximized for hypergraphs of one of two special types. We settled this conjecture in the affirmative…
Weird numbers are abundant numbers that are not pseudoperfect. Since their introduction, the existence of odd weird numbers has been an open problem. In this work, we describe our computational effort to search for odd weird numbers, which…
In 1935, Erd\H{o}s proved that the sums $f_k=\sum_n 1/(n\log n)$, over integers $n$ with exactly $k$ prime factors, are bounded by an absolute constant, and in 1993 Zhang proved that $f_k$ is maximized by the prime sum $f_1=\sum_p 1/(p\log…
The Erd\H{o}s distance problem concerns the least number of distinct distances that can be determined by $N$ points in the plane. The integer lattice with $N$ points is known as \textit{near-optimal}, as it spans $\Theta(N/\sqrt{\log(N)})$…
A decade ago, a beautiful paper by Wagner developed a ``toolkit'' that in certain cases allows one to prove problems hard for parallel access to NP. However, the problems his toolkit applies to most directly are not overly natural. During…
A set of natural numbers $A$ is called primitive if no element of $A$ divides any other. Let $\Omega(n)$ be the number of prime divisors of $n$ counted with multiplicity. Let $f_z(A) = \sum_{a \in A}\frac{z^{\Omega(a)}}{a (\log a)^z}$,…
We consider the set $$\mathcal{A} = \left\{10\cdot a + 11\cdot b \ | \gcd(a,b)=1, a\geq 1, b\geq 2a+1 \right\}.$$ We will prove that $\mathcal{A}$ is unbounded and that there exists a natural number $M\notin \mathcal{A}$ for which…
We develop a new approach to approximate families of sets, complementing the existing `$\Delta$-system method' and `junta approximations method'. The approach, which we refer to as `spread approximations method', is based on the notion of…
A set $S\subset\{1,2,...,n\}$ is called a Sidon set if all the sums $a+b~~(a,b\in S)$ are different. Let $S_n$ be the largest cardinality of the Sidon sets in $\{1,2,...,n\}$. In a former article, the author proved the following asymptotic…
Let $\left\{a_1, \dots, a_n\right\} \subset \mathbb{N}$ be a set of positive integers, $a_n$ denoting the largest element, so that for any two of the $2^n$ subsets the sum of all elements is distinct. Erd\H{o}s asked whether this implies…
An ordered triple $(s,p,n)$ is called admissible if there exist two different multisets $X=\{x_1,x_2,\dotsc,x_n\}$ and $Y=\{y_1,y_2,\dotsc,y_n\}$ such that $X$ and $Y$ share the same sum $s$, the same product $p$, and the same size $n$. We…
We establish the existence of generalised Sidon sets enjoying additional Ramsey-type properties, which are motivated by questions of Erd\H{o}s and Newman and of Alon and Erd\H{o}s.
In this paper we obtain a new lower bound on the Erd\H{o}s distinct distances problem in the plane over prime fields. More precisely, we show that for any set $A\subset \mathbb{F}_p^2$ with $|A|\le p^{7/6}$, the number of distinct distances…
We establish the order of the maximum length of an increasing sequence, bounded by $n$, in which the largest prime divisor of the elements form a decreasing sequence.
The ternary Goldbach conjecture, or three-primes problem, states that every odd number $n$ greater than $5$ can be written as the sum of three primes. The conjecture, posed in 1742, remained unsolved until now, in spite of great progress in…
The following game was introduced in a list of open problems from 1983 attributed to Erd\H{o}s: two players take turns claiming edges of a $K_n$ until all edges are exhausted. Player 1 wins the game if the largest clique that they claim at…
Erd\H{o}s first introduced the idea of covering systems in 1950. Since then, much of the work in this area has concentrated on identifying covering systems that meet specific conditions on their moduli. Among the central open problems in…