Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Claim. E. G. Straus, On a problem in combinatorial number theory, J. Math. Sci. 1 (1966), 77--80, cited as [St66] on the problem page: an admissible subset of , one in which two sums of distinct elements with different numbers of summands never coincide, has at most elements. The paper is not held and has no DOI, and the theorem is stated as two later sources give it. Erdős, Nicolas and Sárközy (Sém. Théor. Nombres Bordeaux (2) 3 (1991), 55--72) state Straus's Theorem 2 as their Lemme 1 (p. 56), for the number of integers that are sums of exactly distinct elements of , and use Straus's Theorem 4 in the form of their Lemme 2 (p. 57), for the largest size of an admissible subset of , proved there from Lemme 1 by following Straus's proof; Deshouillers and Freiman (Astérisque 258 (1999), p. 141) report Straus's bound as . Every admissible subset of the witness obeys this bound, so in the notation of Problem 789
a one-line deduction the problem page records. Library result page of the 1991 reproof: Lemme 2.
Covers. The upper bound . Not covered: the order of growth of , which lies between this bound and Choi's , and the sharper constant of Deshouillers and Freiman's Theorem 1, for .
Depends on. Lemme 2 of Erdős, Nicolas and Sárközy, the form of the bound in which this corpus reads it.
Acceptance. Refereed: the paper appeared in the Journal of
Mathematical Sciences (Delhi), volume 1 (1966), as its zbMATH record (Zbl
0149.28503) gives it; the volume carries no publication day, so this page
is named by the first day of its year. The site's curator, Thomas F. Bloom,
credits to Straus in the problem page's commentary (label
OPEN); the problem is not marked settled there, so the credit is recorded
here and is not listed as reviewed. The theorem is stated from the two
later sources; the proof of Lemme 2 has no independent review.