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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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Claim. The answer to the question of Problem 314 is yes: lim inf⁡nn2ϵ(n)=0\liminf_nn^2\epsilon(n)=0, where ϵ(n)\epsilon(n) is the overshoot above 11 of the shortest block of consecutive reciprocals starting at 1/n1/n whose sum reaches 11. Lim and Steinerberger's Theorem 1 in their paper On differences of two harmonic numbers says that for every c>0c>0 there are infinitely many pairs (m,n)(m,n) of positive integers with 1≤∑ℓ=nm1/ℓ≤1+c/n21\le\sum_{\ell=n}^m1/\ell\le1+c/n^2. For such a pair the least m(n)m(n) whose block sum reaches 11 is at most mm, so ϵ(n)≤c/n2\epsilon(n)\le c/n^2, and for large nn only one mm fits a given nn, so infinitely many distinct nn have n2ϵ(n)≤cn^2\epsilon(n)\le c; this two-line deduction is written out on the problem page and is not in the paper. Their Theorem 2 refines the bound: for every ε>0\varepsilon>0 infinitely many pairs have ∣∑ℓ=nm1/ℓ−1∣≤1/(n2(log⁡n)5/4−ε)|\sum_{\ell=n}^m1/\ell-1|\le1/(n^2(\log n)^{5/4-\varepsilon}). Its transfer to ϵ(n)\epsilon(n) needs the sum to be at least 11, which the paper asserts can be arranged but does not prove, so the refined bound ϵ(n)≤1/(n2(log⁡n)5/4−ε)\epsilon(n)\le1/(n^2(\log n)^{5/4-\varepsilon}) infinitely often rests on Theorem 2 together with that remark. The problem's opening question, how small ϵ(n)\epsilon(n) can be, has no sharper answer than these bounds; the expectation of Erdős and Graham, shared by the authors, that n2+δϵ(n)→∞n^{2+\delta}\epsilon(n)\to\infty for every δ>0\delta>0 is unproved and is recorded on the problem page as open.

Acceptance. Refereed: the paper is published in Mathematika 71 (2025), no. 2, e70009 (published online 27 January 2025; DOI 10.1112/mtk.70009). Reviewed: the site's curator, T. F. Bloom, marks the problem proved and credits Lim and Steinerberger (the community database lists proved, as of its last update of 31 August 2025); a thread comment of 22 January 2026 led to the 23 January 2026 revision stating their refined bound with the absolute value and exponent 5/45/4. Bloom is not an author of the paper. The locators are those of arXiv v3 (11 June 2024); the journal text has not been compared, and the result pages record the proofs (an elementary construction from the continued fraction of ee for Theorem 1, quadratic rational approximation for Theorem 2) as read for structure only. The corpus has not verified the proofs; the acceptance rests on the refereed publication and the curator's credit.

Formalization. Two Lean files prove Theorem 1's statement and are linked above as formalizations of this result; neither was built or audited by the corpus, so no formalized evidence is listed. The file Erdos314.lean in Boris Alexeev's lean-proofs repository at the pinned commit names Lim and Steinerberger as the informal authors and the prover Aristotle and Wouter van Doorn as the formal authors, cites the Mathematika article, and proves that for every c>0c>0 and every NN there are mm and n≥Nn\ge N with 1≤∑ℓ=nm1/ℓ≤1+c/n21\le\sum_{\ell=n}^m1/\ell\le1+c/n^2, recording in a comment that #print axioms reports only propext, Classical.choice and Quot.sound. The file ErdosProblem314.lean in van Doorn's Lean-files repository at the pinned commit, the thread's original formalization, which its header says Aristotle from Harmonic produced, proves the same statement. Both formalize Theorem 1 with arbitrarily large nn, not the liminf statement; the deduction above is in neither file. The formal-conjectures statement file for the problem is a sorry whose attribute points at the first file; it is a statement, not a formalization, and is not linked here.