A problem of Rankin on sets without geometric progressions
A geometric progression of length k and integer ratio is a set of numbers of the form 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 of positive real numbers with a₁ = 1 such that the set contains no geometric progression of length k and integer ratio. Moreover, is a maximal subset of (0,1] that contains no geometric progression of length k and integer ratio. It is also proved that there is...