Status
On this page
Status
Topics
Status
On this page
Status
Topics
If then is divisible by a prime (except ).
If then is divisible by a prime (except ).
Source: erdosproblems.com/384
An accepted solution exists. The statement is true.
The site labels the problem PROVED (LEAN), crediting Ecklund's
theorem, whose bound is ; the label describes the corrected
Statement. The standing judges the corrected Statement and is derived from the
claim pages: solved, proved, through
Ecklund 1969,
whose theorem with the symmetry transfer under Known Results proves it,
refereed in the Pacific Journal of Mathematics and credited by the site's
curator. The living verification record on the theorem page gives the exact
accepted scope, source version, external premises, repair, and limitations.
The site's label says that the proof was verified in Lean but links no file;
it mirrors the community database's status proved (Lean), recorded from 24
August 2026, four weeks before the formal-conjectures statement file was added
on 22 September 2026. The Lean development matching that date is Alexeev's
file, last changed on 24 August 2026, which refutes the strict wording and
gives no evidence for the corrected Statement; no Lean proof of Ecklund's
theorem is on record. The formal-conjectures file, which the site links as the
formalized statement, leaves Ecklund's theorem unproved and names that
refutation as the formal proof of its strict variant.
The site's strict bound fails at : has
the prime divisors and , and no prime is below . It fails again
at , whose prime divisors are and . A complete
computation of the least prime factor of for and
finds the strict bound false at 31 pairs: the listed exception at and
, and 29 pairs in the rows with prime, from ,
, and up to , at each of which is the
least prime factor of ; the bound fails only at
and . In every row that is not twice a prime the two bounds agree,
since a prime is then below . The change replaces ""
by ""; nothing else changes. The evidence is first the posers' own
words. Erdős and Graham [ErGr80], printed p. 73, report that Ecklund [Ec69]
proved the least prime factor of to be below for "with
the unique exception of" , "thus settling a conjecture of Erdős and
Selfridge"; their strict sign is the site's, but both their statements about
instances of the question, a single exception and a settlement by Ecklund's
theorem, hold only for the non-strict bound, since under the strict one
is a second exception and Ecklund's theorem proves only
. Ecklund's paper, printed p. 267, states the problem
Erdős suggested with the non-strict bound: if , then has
a prime divisor . Guy [Gu04], section B33, printed p. 134, states
Ecklund's theorem the same way, and the site's commentary credits the proof to
Ecklund. The defect is not the site's alone: the strict sign is already in
[ErGr80], and the site's wording copies it. A comment in the site's discussion
thread pointed out on 2026-02-04 that Ecklund's bound is . The
results about the site's wording answer it (a prime
), not the corrected Statement (), so they do not count
toward the problem's standing: the Lean file
Erdos384.lean
of Boris Alexeev's repository of Lean proofs (first committed 2026-08-17; the
link pins its 2026-09-15 revision; with the AI systems Codex and GPT-5.6 Sol
named as its formal authors), which proves the strict wording false from
and whose claim page,
Alexeev 2026,
is rejected; and this page's own witness .