An algorithm for Egyptian fraction representations with restricted denominators

DOI10.2140/INVOLVE.2025.18.1MaRDI QIDQ7033744zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Greg Martin, Yue Shi

Publication date 3 February 2025

Published in Involve (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.2140/INVOLVE.2025.18.1

zbMATH Keywords

algorithmsEgyptian fractionsimplementationnumber theoryunit fractions

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Rational numbers as sums of fractions (11D68) Diophantine equations in many variables (11D72)

Review text

Suppose \(r\) is a rational number. In this paper, the main attention is given to finite expansions of the form \N\[ \Nr=\sum^n _{i=1}{\frac{1}{x_i}},\N\] \Nwhere \(n\) and \(x_1, x_2, \dots , x_n\) are finite positive integers.\N\NThe present research consists of two main parts. In the first, the main attention is given to the notion of an Egyptian fraction and to certain known algorithms for finding Egyptian fraction representations. There are noted with examples the following algorithms: the greedy algorithm, the odd greedy algorithm, and the splitting algorithm, as well as the pairing algorithm and the binary algorithm. Auxiliary references including certain surveys, are given.\N\NThe second part is devoted to the main result, which is the following:\N\N``We describe an algorithm for finding all unit fraction representations of a given rational number using denominators from a given finite multiset of positive integers. The freely available algorithm, implemented in Scheme and available on GitHub, is particularly well suited to computing dense Egyptian fraction representations, where the allowed denominators have a prescribed maximum.\N\NThe motivation and two examples of applications for the presented algorithm, are given.

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