On weakly complete sequences formed by the greedy algorithm (Q2911022)

An increasing sequence of positive integers \(a_1,a_2,\dots\) is complete if every positive integer can be written as a sum of distinct elements of the sequence. (An obvious example is the Fibonacci sequence.) Similarly, a sequence is said to be weakly complete if every sufficiently large positive integer can be so expressed. \textit{J. L. Brown} [Am. Math. Mon. 68, 557--560 (1961; Zbl 0115.04305)] gave a simple necesary and sufficient condition for a sequence to be complete. Using the greedy algorithm the authors here examine setting up conditions for specifying the initial terms of a sequence and constructing a weakly complete sequence from these data.