English

On the Erdos Discrepancy Problem

Discrete Mathematics 2014-07-10 v1

Abstract

According to the Erd\H{o}s discrepancy conjecture, for any infinite ±1\pm 1 sequence, there exists a homogeneous arithmetic progression of unbounded discrepancy. In other words, for any ±1\pm 1 sequence (x1,x2,...)(x_1,x_2,...) and a discrepancy CC, there exist integers mm and dd such that i=1mxid>C|\sum_{i=1}^m x_{i \cdot d}| > C. This is an 8080-year-old open problem and recent development proved that this conjecture is true for discrepancies up to 22. Paul Erd\H{o}s also conjectured that this property of unbounded discrepancy even holds for the restricted case of completely multiplicative sequences (CMSs), namely sequences (x1,x2,...)(x_1,x_2,...) where xab=xaxbx_{a \cdot b} = x_{a} \cdot x_{b} for any a,b1a,b \geq 1. The longest CMS with discrepancy 22 has been proven to be of size 246246. In this paper, we prove that any completely multiplicative sequence of size 127,646127,646 or more has discrepancy at least 44, proving the Erd\H{o}s discrepancy conjecture for CMSs of discrepancies up to 33. In addition, we prove that this bound is tight and increases the size of the longest known sequence of discrepancy 33 from 17,00017,000 to 127,645127,645. Finally, we provide inductive construction rules as well as streamlining methods to improve the lower bounds for sequences of higher discrepancies.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1407.2510,
  title  = {On the Erdos Discrepancy Problem},
  author = {Ronan Le Bras and Carla P. Gomes and Bart Selman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1407.2510},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

8 pages; 0 figure; Submitted on April 14, 2014 to the 20th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming

R2 v1 2026-06-22T04:59:39.600Z