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Let be a polynomial of degree whose roots are all real and form an arithmetic progression.
The differences between consecutive zeros of , beginning from the midpoint of towards the endpoints, are monotonically increasing.
Let be a polynomial of degree whose roots are all real and form an arithmetic progression.
The differences between consecutive zeros of , beginning from the midpoint of towards the endpoints, are monotonically increasing.
Source: erdosproblems.com/1114
An accepted solution exists. The statement is true.
Proved, the site's label PROVED. Bálint proved the corrected Statement in 1960 (published in Matematikai Lapok; the accepted claim page is Bálint 1960), and Lorch gave generalizations in 1976. No Lean proof that the corpus built and audited checks the statement.
The site's wording fails for every : a polynomial of degree has at most zeros, so none has the distinct roots and the statement holds only vacuously; and the index in is never introduced. The change replaces "degree " with "degree " and "" with ""; nothing else changes. The site prints no source for the conjecture. Bálint [Ba60b] states it as Erdős's in his opening paragraph (p. 33), apart from his proof, for , a polynomial of degree with for , and the midpoint of the interval ; his Russian summary (p. 39) states the same. His English summary (p. 40) writes that midpoint as of , reusing the product's index, the form the site's stray index follows. Lorch [Lo76] (p. 293), independent of Bálint's proof, states Erdős's conjecture for an arbitrary polynomial with simple, equally spaced, real zeros and measures the gaps outward from the center of symmetry of its zeros, so the degree equals the number of zeros and the interval runs from the first zero to the last. The failure is not a boundary failure, since it holds at every ; the change rests on the setting these sources state. No text of Erdős's on the question is known, and the site's commentary records that Bálint gives none; the degree slip is the site's, and the stray index follows Bálint's English summary. No result concerns the site's wording.