Erdős Problem #27 — Density covered by congruences with moduli between tt and ctct

About 31 years old · traced to

Let us now restrict ourselves to a special case. The nin_i are the integers between tt and ctct. First of all denote by α1(c,t)\alpha_1(c,t) the smallest possible value of the density of the integers satisfying none of the congruences ai(modm)a_i \pmod{m} (t≤m≤ctt \leq m \leq ct), and let α2(c,t)\alpha_2(c,t) be the largest possible value of the density of the integers satisfying none of these congruences. Now as we already remarked α1(c,t)\alpha_1(c,t) can be clearly made at least as large as 1−∏t≤u≤ct(1−1/u)1 - \prod_{t \leq u \leq ct}(1 - 1/u). Can it in fact be made much larger? It is easy to see that it can be 1 only if there is a covering congruence the smallest modulus of which is ≥t\geq t and the largest modulus of which is ctct. On the other hand perhaps there is a cc so that for every ε>0\varepsilon > 0 there is a tt for which α1(c,t)>1−ε\alpha_1(c,t) > 1 - \varepsilon. I am not at all sure if this is possible and I give 100 dollars for an answer.

References

Additional references

P. Erdős, Some of my favourite problems in number theory, combinatorics, and geometry, Resenhas IME-USP 2 (1995), 165-186.

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