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Diophantine Approximation And The Atypical Numbers Of Nathanson And O'Bryant, David Seff
Diophantine Approximation And The Atypical Numbers Of Nathanson And O'Bryant, David Seff
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
For any positive real number $\theta > 1$, and any natural number $n$, it is obvious that sequence $\theta^{1/n}$ goes to 1. Nathanson and O'Bryant studied the details of this convergence and discovered some truly amazing properties. One critical discovery is that for almost all $n$, $\displaystyle\floor{\frac{1}{\fp{\theta^{1/n}}}}$ is equal to $\displaystyle\floor{\frac{n}{\log\theta}-\frac{1}{2}}$, the exceptions, when $n > \log_2 \theta$, being termed atypical $n$ (the set of which for fixed $\theta$ being named $\mcA_\theta$), and that for $\log\theta$ rational, the number of atypical $n$ is finite. Nathanson left a number of questions open, and, subsequently, O'Bryant developed a theory to answer most of these …