Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Price, working with GPT-5.4 Pro, answers Problem 1202 in the negative. The question asks, for fixed , whether some makes every choice of primes , each with a forbidden set of classes modulo , leave at most integers outside every . The construction shows that no works. In the quantitative form the linked Lean file proves, for every there are , primes and sets of classes each such that more than integers in survive, so the statement fails at for every ; the exponent and the bound are the file's choices, not a form the manuscript is held to state. The primes are taken from one short interval and each is an interval of residues, aligned so that a striped set of positive density avoids every forbidden class; the surviving set contains a long arithmetic progression. The site's commentary reports the construction in quantitative form: for any and it gives primes in with half their classes forbidden and at least survivors up to , so half the classes modulo primes of size can be sifted while a positive proportion of remains. That form is recorded as the site states it and was not checked. The large sieve gives the affirmative answer when , so the counterexample lives in the range between and that Erdős asked about.
The manuscript is a read link on an online editor that exposes only the
editor's shell and no document (as of 2026-10-07), and no other copy of it is
recorded; its argument is known to the corpus only through the external Lean
file below, which names a tex/1202.tex that the repository does not carry.
The site's revision history (erdosproblems.com/history/1202, accessed
2026-10-07) shows the curator's revisions of 7, 8 and 12 April 2026 each
crediting the negative resolution to Liam Price and GPT-5.4 Pro; the current
version, last edited 12 April 2026, gives only the surname, and the Lean
file's header names Lisa Price, which disagrees. Price is the claimant, with
the system named as the site names it.
Reviewed. The site's curator, Thomas Bloom, marks Problem 1202 solved
and credits the negative resolution to Price and GPT-5.4 Pro in the site's
commentary (last edited 12 April 2026), the reviewed evidence. The
manuscript carries no date the corpus can read; the page is dated 7 April
2026, the curator's earliest revision carrying the credit in the site's
revision history. No journal publication is recorded, so no refereed
evidence is listed.
Formalization. The external file Erdos1202.lean in Boris Alexeev's
lean-proofs repository, added on 17 August 2026 and pinned at its commit of
31 August 2026, declares itself a formalization of the interval construction
of Price and GPT-5.4 Pro, with Codex and GPT-5.6 Sol as formal authors, so it
is a link on this page and not a claim of its own. It states the problem as
Erdos1202Statement, quantifying and as the site does and
bounding by , proves erdos_1202_counterexample for every at
exponent and survivor bound , and derives not_erdos_1202, the
negation of the statement; its prime-counting input is a prime number
theorem imported from another Lean project. The file was not built or
audited by this corpus, so the claim lists no formalized evidence; the
problem page's Current assessment records its read depth.
Depends on. Nothing beyond the cited manuscript.