Wiki
Wiki

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

Updated


Claim. The answer is yes, with c=2/πc=\sqrt{2/\pi}: the largest family of subsets of {1,…,n}\{1,\ldots,n\} in which no member is the union of other members satisfies

F(n)∼(n⌊n/2⌋)∼2π 2nn1/2.F(n)\sim\binom{n}{\lfloor n/2\rfloor}\sim\sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi}}\,\frac{2^n}{n^{1/2}}.

The argument has two lines. The middle layer, all subsets of size ⌊n/2⌋\lfloor n/2\rfloor, has no member that is a union of other members, because a union of two or more distinct sets of that size is strictly larger, so F(n)≥(n⌊n/2⌋)F(n)\ge\binom{n}{\lfloor n/2\rfloor}. In the other direction, a family with no member a union of other members has in particular no solution of A∪B=CA\cup B=C in distinct members, so it is union-free in the sense of Problem 447, and Kleitman's theorem [Kl71], the solution of that problem, gives F(n)≤(1+o(1))(n⌊n/2⌋)F(n)\le(1+o(1))\binom{n}{\lfloor n/2\rfloor}. The two bounds match, and Stirling's formula turns the central binomial coefficient into 2/π 2n/n1/2\sqrt{2/\pi}\,2^n/n^{1/2}. The printed source of the problem [Er71, item 18] gives the unpublished Erdős–Kleitman bounds and the conjectured asymptotic max⁡ln=(1+o(1)) c 2n/n3/2\max l_n=(1+o(1))\,c\,2^n/n^{3/2} with the exponent 3/23/2 in place of 1/21/2; the middle layer shows that 3/23/2 cannot be right, so the conjecture is false as printed, and the site reads the exponent as a misprint. The claim is the corrected form of the printed conjecture.

Submission note. Posted to the site's forum by Zach Hunter on 13 September 2025:

actually this solves the problem. by problem 447, any such family must have size at most (1+o(1))(nn/2)(1+o(1))\binom{n}{n/2}. and we still have this as a lower bound.

(The site has been updated to address this comment.)

Depends on. Kleitman 1971, the accepted claim of Problem 447, supplies the upper bound: Kleitman's theorem that a union-free family of subsets of an nn-set has at most (1+o(1))(n⌊n/2⌋)(1+o(1))\binom{n}{\lfloor n/2\rfloor} members.

Claimant. Zach Hunter, posting in the problem's discussion thread on erdosproblems.com under the username zach hunter on 13 September 2025: a first comment gives the middle-layer lower bound and a second, minutes later, the deduction of the upper bound from Problem 447 and the conclusion. The result is a thread observation and not a manuscript; it has a page because it is the result the site credits with the solution.

Acceptance. Reviewed: Thomas Bloom, the site's curator, replied in the thread the same day, thanking both posters and adopting the reading of the exponent in [Er71] as a misprint; the site's problem page labels the problem solved and credits Hunter's observation that the solution of Problem 447 implies F(n)∼(nn/2)F(n)\sim\binom{n}{n/2}, which is where the deduction itself is accepted. No refereed publication of the deduction exists; it is two lines over Kleitman's refereed theorem.

Formalization. The Lean file among the links, in Boris Alexeev's repository lean-proofs, declares itself a formalization of a solution to Problem 1023 whose original proof "was found by: Kleitman and Hunter", and says that Kleitman's proof was auto-formalized by Aristotle (Harmonic). It imports the repository's development for Problem 447 (ErdosProblems.Erdos447, Kleitman's theorem as auto-formalized by Aristotle) and uses its erdos_447, the asymptotic F∼(n⌊n/2⌋)F\sim\binom{n}{\lfloor n/2\rfloor} for families with no A∪B=CA\cup B=C; a second header block describing the contents of that imported development is carried over into this file. On top of the import it defines a family to be union-free when no member is the join of a nonempty set of other members, the problem's condition, defines F(n)F(n) as the largest size of such a family of subsets of an nn-element type, carries Kleitman's asymptotic over to the problem's families in kleitman_bound_many, identifies the constant as 2/π\sqrt{2/\pi} in many_sqrt_two_div_pi, and ends with theorem erdos_1023, the existence of c>0c>0 with F(n)∼c 2n/nF(n)\sim c\,2^n/\sqrt n, followed by #print axioms whose recorded output lists propext, Classical.choice and Quot.sound. Alexeev announced the file in the thread on 10 February 2026; the link is pinned to the repository's commit of that day. This corpus has not built the file, so the formalization is a link and not formalized evidence. The formal-conjectures statement file for the problem, as of its commit of 18 September 2026, marks it solved and points at the same file of the same repository under a later toolchain folder (v4.29.1), unpinned; a statement file is not a formalization.