Sylvester's Sequence - Uniqueness of Quickly Growing Series With Rational Sums

Uniqueness of Quickly Growing Series With Rational Sums

As Sylvester himself observed, Sylvester's sequence seems to be unique in having such quickly growing values, while simultaneously having a series of reciprocals that converges to a rational number.

To make this more precise, it follows from results of Badea (1993) that, if a sequence of integers grows quickly enough that

and if the series

converges to a rational number A, then, for all n after some point, this sequence must be defined by the same recurrence

that can be used to define Sylvester's sequence.

Erdős (1980) conjectured that, in results of this type, the inequality bounding the growth of the sequence could be replaced by a weaker condition,

Badea (1995) surveys progress related to this conjecture; see also Brown (1979).

Read more about this topic:  Sylvester's Sequence

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