Let $h,k$ be fixed positive integers, and let $A$ be any set of positive integers. Let $hA:=\{a_1+a_2+\cdots +a_r:a_i\in A,r\le h\}$ denote the set of all integers representable as a sum of no more than $h$ elements of $A$, and let $n(h,A)$ denote the largest integer $n$ such that $\{1,2,...,n\}\subseteq hA$. Let $n(h,k):={max}_A:n(h,A)$, where the maximum is taken over all sets $A$ with $k$ elements. We determine $n(h,A)$ when the elements of $A$ are in geometric progression. In particular, this results in the evaluation of $n(h,2)$ and yields surprisingly sharp lower bounds for $n(h,k)$, particularly for $k=3$.

Integer sequences of the form $\lfloor n^c\rfloor$, where 1 < c < 2, can be locally approximated by sequences of the form ⌊nα+β⌋ in a very good way. Following this approach, we are led to an estimate of the difference ${\sum }_{n\le x}\phi \left(\lfloor n^c\rfloor \right)-1/c{\sum }_{n\le x^c}\phi \left(n\right)n^{1/c-1}$, which measures the deviation of the mean value of φ on the subsequence $\lfloor n^c\rfloor$ from the expected value, by an expression involving exponential sums. As an application we prove that for 1 < c ≤ 1.42 the subsequence of the Thue-Morse sequence indexed by $\lfloor n^c\rfloor$ attains both of its values with...

Let $p\in (0,1)$ be a real number and let $n\ge 2$ be an even integer. We determine the largest value $c_n\left(p\right)$ such that the inequality $$\sum _{i=1}^n{\left|a_i\right|}^p\ge c_n\left(p\right)$$ holds for all real numbers $a_1,...,a_n$ which are pairwise distinct and satisfy ${min}_{i\ne j}|a_i-a_j|=1$. Our theorem completes results of Ozeki, Mitrinović-Kalajdžić, and Russell, who found the optimal value $c_n\left(p\right)$ in the case $p>0$ and $n$ odd, and in the case $p\ge 1$ and $n$ even.

A geometric progression of length k and integer ratio is a set of numbers of the form $a,ar,...,a{r}^{k-1}$ for some positive real number a and integer r ≥ 2. For each integer k ≥ 3, a greedy algorithm is used to construct a strictly decreasing sequence ${\left(a_i\right)}_{i=1}^{\infty }$ of positive real numbers with a₁ = 1 such that the set $G^{\left(k\right)}={\bigcup }_{i=1}^{\infty }(a_{2i},a_{2i-1}]$ contains no geometric progression of length k and integer ratio. Moreover, $G^{\left(k\right)}$ is a maximal subset of (0,1] that contains no geometric progression of length k and integer ratio. It is also proved that...

We study the structure of longest sequences in $\mathbb{Z}{ₙ}^d$ which have no zero-sum subsequence of length n (or less). We prove, among other results, that for $n=2^a$ and d arbitrary, or $n=3^a$ and d = 3, every sequence of c(n,d)(n-1) elements in $\mathbb{Z}{ₙ}^d$ which has no zero-sum subsequence of length n consists of c(n,d) distinct elements each appearing n-1 times, where $c(2^a,d)=2^d$ and $c(3^a,3)=9$.

We say a sequence $={\left(sₙ\right)}_{n\ge 0}$ is primefree if |sₙ| is not prime for all n ≥ 0, and to rule out trivial situations, we require that no single prime divides all terms of . In this article, we focus on the particular Lucas sequences of the first kind, ${}_a={\left(uₙ\right)}_{n\ge 0}$, defined by u₀ = 0, u₁ = 1, and uₙ = aun-1 + un-2 for n≥2, where a is a fixed integer. More precisely, we show that for any integer a, there exist infinitely many integers k such that both of the shifted sequences ${}_a\pm k$ are simultaneously primefree. This...