Sparse distance preservers and additive spanners
Béla Bollobás, Don Coppersmith, et al.
SODA 1998
Paul Erdös asked how dense a sequence of integers, none of which is the sum of a consecutive subsequence, can be. In other words, let 〈x1,...,xm〉 be an increasing sequence of integers in [1,n], such that there do not exist i, j, and k, with 0 < i < j < k ≤ m and xi + xi+1 + ⋯ + xj = xk. Erdös asked if m > n/2 + 1 is possible. A simple argument shows that m > 2n/3 + O(log n) is impossible. Freud recently constructed a sequence with m = 19n/36. This note constructs a sequence with m = 13n/24 - O(1) and extends the simple upper bound to show that m > (2/3 - ∈)n + (log n) is impossible for ∈= 1/512.
Béla Bollobás, Don Coppersmith, et al.
SODA 1998
Inder S. Gopal, Don Coppersmith, et al.
IEEE TC
Alok Aggarwal, Don Coppersmith, et al.
Information Processing Letters
Don Coppersmith, David Gamarnik, et al.
SODA 2002