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Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.

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Koukoulopoulos and Maynard, On the Duffin-Schaeffer conjecture, Ann. of Math. (2) 192 (2020), no. 1, 251-307 (arXiv 1907.04593, posted 2019-07-10). Theorem 1 of the paper: for any ψ:N→R≥0\psi:\mathbb{N}\to\mathbb{R}_{\ge 0} with

∑q≥1ϕ(q)ψ(q)q=∞,\sum_{q\ge 1}\phi(q)\frac{\psi(q)}{q}=\infty,

almost every α∈[0,1]\alpha\in[0,1] has infinitely many reduced fractions p/qp/q with ∣α−p/q∣≤ψ(q)/q\lvert \alpha-p/q\rvert \le \psi(q)/q. This is the divergence half of Problem 999, the Duffin-Schaeffer conjecture of 1941, and it holds for every nonnegative ψ\psi: the problem's ff is such a ψ\psi, and its strict inequality follows from the theorem applied to ψ/2\psi/2, whose weighted sum diverges with that of ψ\psi. The convergence half of the problem is the Borel-Cantelli lemma, since the α\alpha within ψ(q)/q\psi(q)/q of a reduced fraction with denominator qq have measure at most 2ϕ(q)ψ(q)/q2\phi(q)\psi(q)/q. The paper's Theorem 2 settles Catlin's conjecture, the analogue without the coprimality condition, as a corollary. The source card digests the paper.

Acceptance. Refereed: Annals of Mathematics, Second Series, volume 192, issue 1, July 2020. Reviewed: the site's curator, Thomas Bloom, labels Problem 999 PROVED and credits this paper with the proof of the full conjecture in the problem's remarks (erdosproblems.com page accessed 2026-10-07; the forum thread has no comments or proof claims). The formal-conjectures statement file for the problem is tagged as solved research. This corpus has not reproved the theorem and awards no tier of its own.

Formalization. A third party formalized the site's statement: erdos_999 in src/latest/ErdosProblems/Erdos999.lean of Boris Alexeev's repository https://github.com/plby/lean-proofs, pinned above at the commit of 2026-09-01 that last touched the file (the file was added on 2026-08-20). Its header names Koukoulopoulos and Maynard as informal authors and Codex and GPT-5.6 Sol as formal authors, and cites the Annals paper as its primary reference, so it is a link on this page and not an independent claim. Its theorem covers f:N→Nf:\mathbb{N}\to\mathbb{N}, the site's wording, on the unit circle: almost every point has infinitely many reduced approximations within f(q)/qf(q)/q exactly when ∑qϕ(q)f(q)/q\sum_q \phi(q) f(q)/q diverges. For integer-valued ff the file proves the divergence direction by a large-values argument it attributes to Pollington and Vaughan, so it formalizes the site's literal integer-valued statement rather than the general real-valued theorem of the paper. The file contains no sorry. This corpus has not built or audited it, so the claim carries no formalized evidence.

Depends on. Nothing in this wiki; the claim rests on the cited paper alone.