A003004 -id:A003004 - cp's OEIS frontend

A003002 Size of the largest subset of the numbers [1...n] which does not contain a 3-term arithmetic progression.

0, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10, 11, 11, 11, 11, 12, 12, 13, 13, 13, 13, 14, 14, 14, 14, 15, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 17, 17, 17, 18, 18, 18, 18, 19, 19, 19, 19, 19, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 21, 21, 21, 22, 22, 22, 22

Offset: 0

N. J. A. Sloane

"Sequences containing no 3-term arithmetic progressions" is another phrase people may be searching for.
a(n) = size of largest subset of [1..n] such that no term is the average of any two others. These are also called non-averaging sets, or 3-free sequences. - N. J. A. Sloane, Mar 01 2012
More terms of this sequence can be found directly from A065825, because A003002(n) (this sequence) = the integer k such that A065825(k) <= n < A065825(k+1). - Shreevatsa R, Oct 18 2009

			Examples from Dybizbanski (2012) (includes earlier examples found by other people):
n, a(n), example of an optimal subset:
0, 0, []
1, 1, [1]
2, 2, [1, 2]
4, 3, [1, 2, 4]
5, 4, [1, 2, 4, 5]
9, 5, [1, 2, 4, 8, 9]
11, 6, [1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11]
13, 7, [1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 13]
14, 8, [1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 13, 14]
20, 9, [1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 14, 15, 18, 20]
24, 10, [1, 2, 5, 7, 11, 16, 18, 19, 23, 24]
26, 11, [1, 2, 5, 7, 11, 16, 18, 19, 23, 24, 26]
30, 12, [1, 3, 4, 8, 9, 11, 20, 22, 23, 27, 28, 30]
32, 13, [1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 11, 19, 22, 23, 26, 28, 31, 32]
36, 14, [1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 13, 21, 23, 26, 27, 30, 32, 35, 36]
40, 15, [1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 13, 14, 28, 29, 31, 32, 37, 38, 40]
41, 16, [1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 13, 14, 28, 29, 31, 32, 37, 38, 40, 41]
51, 17, [1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 13, 14, 17, 31, 35, 37, 38, 40, 46, 47, 50, 51]
54, 18, [1, 2, 5, 6, 12, 14, 15, 17, 21, 31, 38, 39, 42, 43, 49, 51, 52, 54]
58, 19, [1, 2, 5, 6, 12, 14, 15, 17, 21, 31, 38, 39, 42, 43, 49, 51, 52, 54, 58]
63, 20, [1, 2, 5, 7, 11, 16, 18, 19, 24, 26, 38, 39, 42, 44, 48, 53, 55, 56, 61, 63]
71, 21, [1, 2, 5, 7, 10, 17, 20, 22, 26, 31, 41, 46, 48, 49, 53, 54, 63, 64, 68, 69, 71]
74, 22, [1, 2, 7, 9, 10, 14, 20, 22, 23, 25, 29, 46, 50, 52, 53, 55, 61, 65, 66, 68, 73, 74]
82, 23, [1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 11, 19, 22, 23, 26, 28, 31, 49, 57, 59, 62, 63, 66, 68, 71, 78, 81, 82]

H. L. Abbott, On a conjecture of Erdos and Straus on non-averaging sets of integers, Proc. 5th British Combinatorial Conference, 1975, pp. 1-4.
Bloom, T. F. (2014). Quantitative results in arithmetic combinatorics (Doctoral dissertation, University of Bristol).
N. J. A. Sloane and Simon Plouffe, The Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, Academic Press, 1995 (includes this sequence).
E. G. Straus, Nonaveraging sets. In Combinatorics (Proc. Sympos. Pure Math., Vol. XIX, Univ. California, Los Angeles, Calif., 1968), pp. 215-222. Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, R.I., 1971. MR0316255 (47 #4803)
T. Tao and V. Vu, Additive Combinatorics, Problem 10.1.3.

Fausto A. C. Cariboni, Table of n, a(n) for n = 0..211
Harvey Abbott, Extremal problems on nonaveraging and nondividing sets, Pacific Journal of Mathematics 91.1 (1980): 1-12.
Harvey Abbott, On the Erdős-Straus non-averaging set problem, Acta Mathematica Hungarica 47.1-2 (1986): 117-119.
Tanbir Ahmed, Janusz Dybizbanski and Hunter Snevily, Unique Sequences Containing No k-Term Arithmetic Progressions, Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, 20(4), 2013, #P29.
F. Behrend, On sets of integers which contain no three terms in an arithmetic progression, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, v. 32, 1946, pp. 331-332. MR0018694.
Thomas F. Bloom, A quantitative improvement for Roth's theorem on arithmetic progressions, Journal of the London Mathematical Society, 93(3), 643-663 (2016).
Thomas Bloom, Problem 3, Problem 139, Problem 140, and Problem 142, Erdős Problems.
Thomas F. Bloom and Olof Sisask, Logarithmic bounds for Roth's theorem via almost-periodicity, arXiv:1810.12791 [math.CO], 2018-2019.
Thomas F. Bloom and Olof Sisask, Breaking the logarithmic barrier in Roth's theorem on arithmetic progressions, 2020 preprint. arXiv:2007.03528 [math.NT]
Thomas F. Bloom and Olof Sisask, The Kelley--Meka bounds for sets free of three-term arithmetic progressions, arXiv:2302.07211 [math.NT], 2023.
Fausto A. C. Cariboni, Sets of maximal span that yield a(n) for n = 4..209, Sep 02 2018.
Irene Choi, Shreyas Ekanathan, Aidan Gao, Tanya Khovanova, Sylvia Zia Lee, Rajarshi Mandal, Vaibhav Rastogi, Daniel Sheffield, Michael Yang, Angela Zhao, and Corey Zhao, The Struggles of Chessland, arXiv:2212.01468 [math.HO], 2022.
Janusz Dybizbanski, Sequences containing no 3-term arithmetic progressions, Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, 19(2), 2012, #P15. [Gives first 120 terms].
P. Erdős and E. G. Straus, Nonaveraging sets II, In Combinatorial theory and its applications, II (Proc. Colloq., Balatonfüred, 1969), pp. 405-411. North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1970. MR0316256 (47 #4804).
Zander Kelley and Raghu Meka, Strong Bounds for 3-Progressions, arXiv:2302.05537 [math.NT], 2023-2024.
Zander Kelley, Strong Bounds for 3-Progressions: In-Depth, Institute for Advanced Study, YouTube video, Mar 21, 2023.
Raghu Meka, Strong Bounds for 3-Progressions, Institute for Advanced Study, YouTube video, Mar 20, 2023.
Kevin O'Bryant, Sets of Natural Numbers with Proscribed Subsets, J. Int. Seq. 18 (2015) # 15.7.7.
Quanta Magazine, 2023's Biggest Breakthroughs in Math, Three Arithmetic Progressions, YouTube video, Dec 23, 2023.
Karl C. Rubin, On sequences of integers with no k terms in arithmetic progression, 1973 [Scanned copy, with correspondence]
Tom Sanders, On Roth's theorem on progressions, arXiv:1011.0104 [math.CA], 2010-2011; Annals of Mathematics 174:1 (2011), pp. 619-636.
Z. Shao, F. Deng, M. Liang, and X. Xu, On sets without k-term arithmetic progression, Journal of Computer and System Sciences 78 (2012) 610-618.
N. J. A. Sloane, New Gilbreath Conjectures, Sum and Erase, Dissecting Polygons, and Other New Sequences, Doron Zeilberger's Exper. Math. Seminar, Rutgers, Sep 14 2023: Video, Slides, Updates. (Mentions this sequence.)
Terence Tao, Erdős problem database, see nos. 3, 139-140, 142.
Samuel S. Wagstaff, Jr., On k-free sequences of integers, Math. Comp., 26 (1972), 767-771.
Wikipedia, Salem-Spencer set
Index entries related to non-averaging sequences

The classical lower bound is A104406; A229037 gives a "greedy" lower bound. - N. J. A. Sloane, Apr 29 2023
Cf. A003003, A003004, A003005, A065825, A208746, A143824.
Cf. A358062 (diagonal domination number for the n X n queen graph).
A selection of sequences related to "no three-term arithmetic progression": A003002, A003003, A003278, A004793, A005047, A005487, A033157, A065825, A092482, A093678, A093679, A093680, A093681, A093682, A094870, A101884, A101886, A101888, A140577, A185256, A208746, A229037.

(* Program not suitable to compute a large number of terms *)
a[n_] := a[n] = For[r = Range[n]; k = n, k >= 1, k--, If[AnyTrue[Subsets[r, {k}], FreeQ[#, {_, a_, _, b_, _, c_, _} /; b - a == c - b] &], Return[k]]];
Table[Print["a(", n, ") = ", a[n]]; a[n], {n, 1, 25}] (* Jean-François Alcover, Jan 21 2018 *)

ap3(v)=for(i=1,#v-2, for(j=i+2,#v, my(t=v[i]+v[j]); if(t%2==0 && setsearch(v,t/2), return(1)))); 0
a(N)=forstep(n=N,2,-1, forvec(v=vector(n,i,[1,N]),if(!ap3(v), return(n)),2)); N \\ Charles R Greathouse IV, Apr 22 2022

Sanders proves that a(n) << n*(log log n)^5/log n. - Charles R Greathouse IV, Jan 22 2016

Bloom & Sisask prove that a(n) << n/(log n)^c for some c > 1. - Charles R Greathouse IV, Oct 11 2022

Extended from 53 terms to 80 terms, using a simple brute-force program with some pruning, by Shreevatsa R, Oct 18 2009
See Dybizbanski (2012) for first 120 terms. - N. J. A. Sloane, Dec 17 2013
Edited by N. J. A. Sloane, Apr 12 2016
a(0)=0 prepended by Alois P. Heinz, May 14 2020

A065825 Smallest k such that n numbers may be picked in {1,...,k} with no three terms in arithmetic progression.

Original entry on oeis.org

1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 11, 13, 14, 20, 24, 26, 30, 32, 36, 40, 41, 51, 54, 58, 63, 71, 74, 82, 84, 92, 95, 100, 104, 111, 114, 121, 122, 137, 145, 150, 157, 163, 165, 169, 174, 194, 204, 209

Offset: 1

Ed Pegg Jr, Nov 23 2001

"Sequences containing no 3-term arithmetic progressions" is another phrase people may be searching for. See also A003002.
Don Reble notes large gaps between a(4k) and a(4k+1).
Ed Pegg Jr conjectures the 2^k term always equals (3^k+1)/2 and calls these "unprogressive" sets. Jaroslaw Wroblewski (jwr(AT)math.uni.wroc.pl), Nov 04 2003, remarks that this conjecture is known to be false.
Further comments from Jaroslaw Wroblewski (jwr(AT)math.uni.wroc.pl), Nov 05 2003: log a(n) / log n tends to 1 was established in 1946 by Behrend. This was extended by me in the Math. Comp. paper. Using appropriately chosen intervals from B(4,9,4) and B(6,9,11) I have determined that log (2a(n)-1) / log n < log 3 / log 2 holds for n=60974 and for n=2^19 since a(60974) <= 19197041, a(524288) <= 515749566. See my web page for further bounds.
Bloom & Sisask prove that a(n) >> n (log n)^(1+c) for an absolute (small) constant c > 0. This improves the o(1) in Behrend's result that log a(n)/log n = 1 + o(1) to log log n/log n. - Charles R Greathouse IV, Aug 04 2020

			a(9) = 20 = 1 2 6 7 9 14 15 18 20
a(10) = 24 = 1 2 5 7 11 16 18 19 23 24
a(11) = 26 = 1 2 5 7 11 16 18 19 23 24 26
a(12) = 30 = 1 3 4 8 9 11 20 22 23 27 28 30 (unique)
a(13) = 32 = 1 2 4 8 9 11 19 22 23 26 28 31 32
a(14) = 36 = 1 2 4 8 9 13 21 23 26 27 30 32 35 36
a(15) = 40 = 1 2 4 5 10 11 13 14 28 29 31 32 37 38 40
a(16) = 41 = 1 2 4 5 10 11 13 14 28 29 31 32 37 38 40 41
a(17) = 51 = 1 2 4 5 10 13 14 17 31 35 37 38 40 46 47 50 51
a(18) = 54 = 1 2 5 6 12 14 15 17 21 31 38 39 42 43 49 51 52 54
a(19) = 58 = 1 2 5 6 12 14 15 17 21 31 38 39 42 43 49 51 52 54 58
a(20) = 63 = 1 2 5 7 11 16 18 19 24 26 38 39 42 44 48 53 55 56 61 63
a(21) = 71 = 1 2 5 7 10 17 20 22 26 31 41 46 48 49 53 54 63 64 68 69 71
a(22) = 74 = 1 2 7 9 10 14 20 22 23 25 29 46 50 52 53 55 61 65 66 68 73 74
a(23) = 82 = 1 2 4 8 9 11 19 22 23 26 28 31 49 57 59 62 63 66 68 71 78 81 82
a(24) = 84 = 1 3 4 8 9 16 18 21 22 25 30 37 48 55 60 63 64 67 69 76 77 81 82 84
a(25) = 92 = 1 2 6 8 9 13 19 21 22 27 28 39 58 62 64 67 68 71 73 81 83 86 87 90 92
a(26) = 95 = 1 2 4 5 10 11 22 23 25 26 31 32 55 56 64 65 67 68 76 77 82 83 91 92 94 95
a(27) = 100 = 1 3 6 7 10 12 20 22 25 26 29 31 35 62 66 68 71 72 75 77 85 87 90 91 94 96 100

Donald E. Knuth, Satisfiability, Fascicle 6, volume 4 of The Art of Computer Programming. Addison-Wesley, 2015, pages 135 and 190, Problem 31.
C. R. J. Singleton, "No Progress": Solution to Problem 2472, Journal of Recreational Mathematics, 30(4) 305 1999-2000.

Tanbir Ahmed, Janusz Dybizbanski and Hunter Snevily, Unique Sequences Containing No k-Term Arithmetic Progressions, Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, 20(4), 2013, #P29.
Cyriac Antony, Jacob Antony, D. Laavanya, and S. Devi Yamini, Graceful Coloring is Computationally Hard, Algorithms and Discrete Applied Mathematics, Eds. Daya Gaur, Rogers Mathew, Proc. 11th Int'l Conf. (CALDAM 2025) Lect. Notes Comp. Sci. (LNCS) Vol. 15536, Springer, 13-24. See also arXiv:2407.02179, [math.CO], 2024. See pp. 1-2.
F. Behrend, On sets of integers which contain no three terms in an arithmetic progression, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, v. 32, 1946, pp. 331-332.
Thomas F. Bloom and Olof Sisask, Breaking the logarithmic barrier in Roth's theorem on arithmetic progressions, arXiv:2007.03528 [math.NT], 2020.
Janusz Dybizbanski, Sequences containing no 3-term arithmetic progressions, The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, 19, no. 2 (2012), #P15.
Erica Klarreich, Landmark Math Proof Clears Hurdle in Top Erdős Conjecture, Quanta Magazine, Aug 03 2020.
Tom Sanders, On Roth's theorem on progressions, Annals of Mathematics 174:1 (2011), pp. 619-636; arXiv version, arXiv:1011.0104 [math.CA], 2010-2011.
Samuel S. Wagstaff, Jr., On k-free sequences of integers, Math. Comp., 26 (1972), 767-771.
Wikipedia, Salem-Spencer set
J. Wroblewski, A Nonaveraging Set of Integers with a Large Sum of Reciprocals, Math. Comput. 43, 261-262, 1984.
J. Wroblewski, Nonaveraging Sets
Index entries related to non-averaging sequences

Cf. A003002 (three-free sequences), A003003, A003004, A003005, A003278, A005047, A225745.

ThreeAPFree[n_, k_, a_] := Module[{d, j},
   For[d = 1, d < k/2, d ++,
    For[j = 1, j <= n - 2, j++,
     If[MemberQ[a, a[[j]] + d] && MemberQ[a, a[[j]] + 2 d],
      Return[False]]]];
   Return[True]];
A065825[n_] := Module[{k, x, a},
  k = n;
  While[True,
   x = Subsets[Range[k], {n}];
   For[i = 1, i <= Length[x], i++,
    a = x[[i]];
    If[a[[1]] != 1 || a[[n]] != k, Continue[]];
    If[ThreeAPFree[n, k, a], Return[k]]];
   k++]]
Table[A065825[n], {n, 1, 10}]  (* Robert Price, Mar 11 2019 *)

\\ brute force
has3AP(v)=for(i=1,#v-2,for(j=i+2,#v,my(t=(v[i]+v[j])/2);if(denominator(t)==1 && setsearch(v,t),return([v[i],t,v[j]]))));0
a(n)=for(k=n,oo,forvec(u=vector(n,i,if(i==1,[1,1],i==k,[k,k],[2,k-1])),if(has3AP(u)==0, /* print(u); */ return(u[n])),2)) \\ Charles R Greathouse IV, Aug 04 2020

a(n) = A005047(n) + 1. - Rob Pratt, Jul 09 2015

a(19) found by Guenter Stertenbrink in response to an A003278-based puzzle on www.mathpuzzle.com
More terms from Don Reble, Nov 25 2001
a(28)-a(32) from William Rex Marshall, Mar 24 2002
a(33) from William Rex Marshall, Nov 15 2003
a(34) from William Rex Marshall, Jan 24 2004
a(35)-a(36) (found by Gavin Theobold in 2004) communicated by William Rex Marshall, Mar 10 2007
a(37)-a(41) (from Wroblewski's web page) added by Joerg Arndt, Apr 25 2012
a(42)-a(43) from Fausto A. C. Cariboni, Sep 02 2018

A003003 Size of the largest subset of the numbers [1...n] which doesn't contain a 4-term arithmetic progression.

Original entry on oeis.org

1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 11, 11, 12, 12, 13, 13, 14, 14, 15, 15, 16, 17, 17, 18, 18, 18, 19, 20, 20, 20, 21, 21, 21, 22, 22, 22, 23, 23, 24, 24, 24, 25, 25, 26, 26, 26, 27, 28, 28, 28, 28, 29, 29, 30, 30, 30, 30, 31, 31, 32, 32, 33, 33, 34, 34, 34

Offset: 1

N. J. A. Sloane

These subsets have been called 4-free sequences.
Szemeredi's theorem for arithmetic progressions of length 4 asserts that a(n) is o(n) as n -> infinity. - Doron Zeilberger, Mar 26 2008
False g.f. (z^12 + 1 - z^11 - z^10 + z^8 - z^6 + z^5 - z^3 + z)/((z+1)*(z-1)^2) was conjectured by Simon Plouffe in his 1992 dissertation, but in fact is wrong (cf. A136746).

N. J. A. Sloane and Simon Plouffe, The Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, Academic Press, 1995 (includes this sequence).

Fausto A. C. Cariboni, Table of n, a(n) for n = 1..142
Thomas Bloom, Problem 3, Problem 139, and Problem 142, Erdős Problems.
Fausto A. C. Cariboni, Sets that yield a(n) for n = 5..142, Jun 15 2018
Kevin O'Bryant, Sets of Natural Numbers with Proscribed Subsets, J. Int. Seq. 18 (2015) # 15.7.7
Simon Plouffe, Approximations de séries génératrices et quelques conjectures, Dissertation, Université du Québec à Montréal, 1992; arXiv:0911.4975 [math.NT], 2009.
Simon Plouffe, 1031 Generating Functions, Appendix to Thesis, Montreal, 1992
Karl C. Rubin, On sequences of integers with no k terms in arithmetic progression, 1973 [Scanned copy, with correspondence]
Zehui Shao, Fei Deng, Meilian Liang, and Xiaodong Xu, On sets without k-term arithmetic progression, Journal of Computer and System Sciences 78 (2012) 610-618.
Terence Tao, Erdős problem database, see nos. 3, 139, 142.
Samuel S. Wagstaff, Jr., On k-free sequences of integers, Math. Comp., 26 (1972), 767-771.

Cf. A003002, A003004, A003005, A065825, A136746.

A selection of sequences related to "no three-term arithmetic progression": A003002, A003003, A003278, A004793, A005047, A005487, A033157, A065825, A092482, A093678, A093679, A093680, A093681, A093682, A094870, A101884, A101886, A101888, A140577, A185256, A208746, A229037.

a(52)-a(72) from Rob Pratt, Jul 09 2015

cp's OEIS Frontend

A003002 Size of the largest subset of the numbers [1...n] which does not contain a 3-term arithmetic progression.

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A065825 Smallest k such that n numbers may be picked in {1,...,k} with no three terms in arithmetic progression.

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A003003 Size of the largest subset of the numbers [1...n] which doesn't contain a 4-term arithmetic progression.

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A003005 Size of the largest subset of the numbers [1..n] which doesn't contain a 6-term arithmetic progression.

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A005049 Minimal span of set of n elements with no 5-term arithmetic progression.

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A225859 Smallest k such that n numbers can be picked in {1,...,k} with no five terms in arithmetic progression.

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