Problem:
Find all positive integers for which there exists a set of exactly distinct positive integers, none of which exceed , whose reciprocals add up to .
Solution
Solution:
The answer is all . For , the set works. For , no set exists, simply because the sum of reciprocals of two distinct integers cannot be equal to . For , take .
For , the identity
allows us to extend a sum of terms to one of exactly terms. Taking and allows us to turn the sum to the -term sum
This construction works provided that for any . Otherwise, we have , and instead we apply the above to the sum , taking , to yield
The above then works, because if for some , then , and for any by parity, since is odd and is always even. This construction is not unique; there are other similar ones.
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