Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Statement
Setting (p. 3). is the set of all nontrivial divisors of (the paper's equation (3); the divisor is left out):
listed as , with prefixes . is the independence number of the unit-fraction hypergraph of Lemma 1.
Proposition 1 (Finite certificate, p. 3). For the prefixes of (3), the paper's table gives . For its values are
so the deficiencies run
and in particular .
Source. Xinjun Wang, A 667/806 Upper Bound for Erdős Problem #301 on Unit-Fraction-Free Sets, unpublished manuscript dated May 27, 2026 on its title page, posted on ResearchGate (2026), identified on the source card: Proposition 1 and its table on p. 3, the set (3) on p. 3, and the verification script in Appendix A (pp. 6--9). An unrefereed manuscript, which the site's Problem 301 discussion thread describes as AI-generated.
Read depth. Claims checked: the statement and every row of the table were read on the page image, and the values above agree with the script's expected-value list on p. 6. The script was read as text and not rerun, so the values themselves are the manuscript's claim. Nothing here is independently reviewed.
Proof pointer
P. 3 and Appendix A (pp. 6--9). Each lower bound the tabulated value is witnessed by an explicit independent subset of listed in the script. For the upper bounds the script enumerates the inclusion-minimal hyperedges of the full (each identity checked as the integer identity ), restricts them to prefixes, and runs an exact branch-and-bound search only at the last prefix of each run of equal values; since cannot grow on passing to a subset, that settles the earlier prefixes of the run. Remark 1 (p. 3) explains why discarding non-minimal hyperedges leaves the independent sets unchanged.
Dependencies
- Lemma 1 for the hypergraph and ; otherwise a finite computation.
Bears on
- Problem 301: the table is the finite input to the manuscript's Theorem 1; weighted over disjoint dilates it gives the manuscript's missing density . The proposition is a finite statement about and by itself gives no bound for .