Result: On the Set of Points Represented by Harmonic Subseries

Title:
On the Set of Points Represented by Harmonic Subseries
Authors:
Source:
The American Mathematical Monthly. :1-17
Publication Status:
Preprint
Publisher Information:
Informa UK Limited, 2025.
Publication Year:
2025
Document Type:
Academic journal Article
Language:
English
ISSN:
1930-0972
0002-9890
DOI:
10.1080/00029890.2025.2540753
DOI:
10.48550/arxiv.2405.07681
Rights:
arXiv Non-Exclusive Distribution
Accession Number:
edsair.doi.dedup.....0bc5fd966c33f18ace05d311862d8f9d
Database:
OpenAIRE

Further Information

We help Alice play a certain "convergence game" against Bob and win the prize, which is a constructive solution to a problem by Erdős and Graham, posed in their 1980 book on open questions in combinatorial number theory. Namely, after several reductions using peculiar arithmetic identities, the game outcome shows that the set of points \[ \Big(\sum_{n\in A}\frac{1}{n}, \sum_{n\in A}\frac{1}{n+1}, \sum_{n\in A}\frac{1}{n+2}\Big), \] obtained as $A$ ranges over infinite sets of positive integers, has a non-empty interior. This generalizes a two-dimensional result by Erdős and Straus.
14 pages; v2: the proof is rewritten as a strategic two-player game; the exposition is less formal and (hopefully) more entertaining; an explicit ball in the interior is constructed; Mathematica notebook that supports computation is updated; v3: minor changes following referees' suggestions