Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
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Claim. Call a sequence of integers complete when every sufficiently large integer is a sum of terms with distinct indices, each occurrence used at most once, and let a deletion remove occurrences. For integers there is a nondecreasing integer sequence that stays complete after every deletion of occurrences and is incomplete after every deletion of occurrences if and only if . So the pairs Problem 348 asks for are exactly those with : the powers of give , , and the Fibonacci sequence gives , , while no sequence works for any . The result is Theorem 1 of Geneson, J., Deletion thresholds and exponential examples for complete sequences, arXiv:2609.25107 (v1 2026-09-20), whose statement the card Theorem 1 records clause by clause. The ResearchGate note of the forum claim, "Deletion thresholds for complete sequences", is the result's earlier posting; its posting date is not recorded, so the page is dated by the forum claim.
Submission note. Posted to erdosproblems.com as a proof claim by Jesse Geneson (account jtg) on 9 September 2026, giving "GPT-6 Astra, Claude Opus 5" as the AI used:
I prove that only work. If every two-term deletion preserves completeness, then some deletion of any finite size does too. Notes: Here completeness means that every sufficiently large integer is a sum of finitely many terms, with each occurrence used at most once. The proof was found by Codex with GPT-6 Astra Ultra. I directed the writing and auditing workflow, then read and edited the proof and used GPT-6 and Claude Opus 5 for additional audits.
Formulation. The claim reads "complete" in the eventual sense, finitely many exceptions allowed, and allows repeated values as separate occurrences. The site's remarks record that van Doorn excluded every under the strong requirement that every positive integer be a subset sum, and say that Erdős and Graham most likely meant the eventual notion; the claim settles that eventual reading, which is the reading the problem's standing concerns here.
Argument. As the paper and its card describe it: a central-interval theorem (Theorem 2) shows that a complete nondecreasing positive sequence whose prefix slack tends to infinity represents, by its first terms, every integer between the completeness threshold and for every large ; a sequence that stays complete after every single deletion has slack tending to infinity (Lemma 3). From these, if every two-term deletion preserves completeness then so does some deletion of any prescribed finite size, which excludes ; the two constructions give and .
Standing. Claimed. The paper is a preprint with no journal record on the
arXiv page the site's label is OPEN and no
outside review of the proof is known. The author submitted the claim to the
proof-claims thread on 2026-09-09 (the discussion link), stating that the
proof was found by Codex with GPT-6 Astra Ultra, that they directed the writing
and auditing, read and edited the proof, and used GPT-6 and Claude Opus 5 for
further audits; the paper's closing declaration states that the proofs were
found with the assistance of Codex with GPT-6 Astra Ultra, that the author
directed separate writing and auditing teams, read and edited the proofs and
requested further revisions, and that they take responsibility for the content;
it does not mention the GPT-6 and Claude Opus 5 audits. In the thread the forum
user Woett observed on 2026-09-10 that the argument gives the following: if
is a nonempty set of positive integers with complete for all
, then some infinite has complete for
every finite ; Woett linked a Lean 4 file (the formalization
link, pinned to its last commit of 2026-09-10) proving the weaker statement that
for every some -element leaves complete.
The file imports Mathlib, credits the formalization to the system Aristotle from
Harmonic, and prints the axioms of its theorem main; it covers the deletion
lemma that excludes for sets, not the constructions and not Theorem 1
itself. The claim lists no evidence: the paper is unrefereed, no outside review
is known, and the Lean file covers only the lemma.
Depends on. Nothing in this wiki.