Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Claim. For , the function of Problem 304,
hence , which is the formal-conjectures variant
erdos_304.variants.lower_1950, stated with that file's definitions
smallestCollection and smallestCollectionTo of and . The
result is the Lean 4 file erdos/304/Lower1950.lean of the GitHub repository
thepriceisright/publications, pinned above. Its header says that the proof
was produced by Harmonic's Aristotle prover inside an automated harness of
the publishing account, which generated the theorem statement from the
repository's 304.lean at the revision its header names, an earlier state
than the linked record, and checked the result against that revision, and
that no human mathematician has reviewed the proof. The file names no
informal author, so it is an independent proof with its own page rather
than a link on
Erdős's 1950 page,
whose Theorem 2 gives the same lower bound by a different argument. The
claimant is the publishing account, which opened the pull request linked
above. The route: the greedy algorithm represents by distinct unit
fractions, so is attained by some -term representation; a sum
of distinct unit fractions below is at most , so
; and this gives for .
Covers. The lower bound , with the explicit constant for , only. Not covered: the upper bounds and the question whether , which the OpenAI release's accepted claim answers.
Depends on. No page of this wiki.
Standing. Claimed. The file has no write-up and no publication. The pull
request that added it to google-deepmind/formal-conjectures as the
formal_proof of the variant, opened 1 September 2026 and merged
18 September 2026, reports a compilation against the pinned statement with
the axioms propext, Classical.choice and Quot.sound only. This corpus
has not built or audited the file, so the page lists no formalized
evidence. The site labels the problem OPEN and its commentary does not
mention the proof.