# Not especially famous, long-open problems which anyone can understand

Question: I'm asking for a big list of not especially famous, long open problems that anyone can understand. Community wiki, so one problem per answer, please.

Motivation: I plan to use this list in my teaching, to motivate general education undergraduates, and early year majors, suggesting to them an idea of what research mathematicians do.

Meaning of "not too famous" Examples of problems that are too famous might be the Goldbach conjecture, the $3x+1$-problem, the twin-prime conjecture, or the chromatic number of the unit-distance graph on ${\Bbb R}^2$. Roughly, if there exists a whole monograph already dedicated to the problem (or narrow circle of problems), no need to mention it again here. I'm looking for problems that, with high probability, a mathematician working outside the particular area has never encountered.

Meaning of: anyone can understand The statement (in some appropriate, but reasonably terse formulation) shouldn't involve concepts beyond (American) K-12 mathematics. For example, if it weren't already too famous, I would say that the conjecture that "finite projective planes have prime power order" does have barely acceptable articulations.

Meaning of: long open The problem should occur in the literature or have a solid history as folklore. So I do not mean to call here for the invention of new problems or to collect everybody's laundry list of private-research-impeding unproved elementary technical lemmas. There should already exist at least of small community of mathematicians who will care if one of these problems gets solved.

I hope I have reduced subjectivity to a minimum, but I can't eliminate all fuzziness -- so if in doubt please don't hesitate to post!

To get started, here's a problem that I only learned of recently and that I've actually enjoyed describing to general education students.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union-closed_sets_conjecture

Edit: I'm primarily interested in conjectures - yes-no questions, rather than classification problems, quests for algorithms, etc.

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You might get more success if you sampled certain open problem lists and indicated which ones fit your list and which ones did not. I could mention various combinatorial problems such as integer complexity, determinant spectrum, covering design optimization, but I can't tell from your description if they would be suitable for you. Gerhard "They Are Suitable For Me" Paseman, 2012.06.21 –  Gerhard Paseman Jun 21 '12 at 19:11
Here is some collection of some other "collect open problems" quests. on MO: mathoverflow.net/questions/96202/… PS Nice question ! PSPS may be add tag "open-problems" –  Alexander Chervov Jun 21 '12 at 20:53
Nice question!! –  Suvrit Jun 22 '12 at 3:25
To save the search for explanation of cryptic acronyms for those of us outside US, K-12 means high school. @Mahmud: You are using a wrong meaning of the word “problem”. The TSP is not an unproved mathematical statement, it is a computational task. –  Emil Jeřábek Jun 22 '12 at 12:05
More precisely, K-12 means anything up to high school (K = Kindergarten, 12 = 12th grade, and K-12 covers this range). –  Henry Cohn Jun 22 '12 at 13:05

I think you could give an accessible K-12 formulation of the definition of a group (as a group of permutations, for instance) and of an integral group ring. The Zero Divisor Conjecture (Kaplansky, 1940) then states, in one version, that if $G$ is a torsion-free group then the group ring $\mathbb{Z}[G]$ has no zero divisors besides the number $0$.

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>I think you could give an accessible K-12 formulation of the definition of a group ... In any case this is perfect for my follow-up question which the net gods decided to close for the time being. –  David Feldman Jul 13 '12 at 5:36
@David just wanted to write the same :) mathoverflow.net/questions/101169/… –  Alexander Chervov Jul 13 '12 at 6:18

Alexander's Conjecture, and by extension a lot of open problems about combinatorial subdivision, are as easy to understand as they are maddening. To quote Melikhov:

Alexander's 80-year old problem of whether any two triangulations of a [3-dimensional] polyhedron have a common iterated-stellar subdivision. They are known to be related by a sequence of stellar subdivisions and inverse operations (Alexander), and to have a common subdivision (Whitehead). However the notion of an arbitrary subdivision is an affine, and not a purely combinatorial notion. It would be great if one could show at least that for some family of subdivisions definable in purely combinatorial terms (e.g. replacing a simplex by a simplicially collapsible or consructible ball), common subdivisions exist...

Stellar subdivision (and arbitrary subdivisions) can be explained to a K-12 student with a picture. For a stellar subdivision, choose a face F, take its midpoint, and connect it to all vertices of tetrahedra of which F is a face. For arbitrary subdivision, invent some silly triangulation of a simplex, and just plug it inside. refining heighbouring simplexes as needed.

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The following problem is very well-known among algebraic geometers:

Does there exist a cubic 4-fold that is not rational?


It's probably not well-known outside of algebraic geometry, even though it can easily be explained in every elementary terms:

Does there exist a polynomial equation $F$ of degree three in five variables with the following property: Let $X \subset \mathbb C^5$ be the solution set of $F = 0$. Then there exists no chart $U \subset \mathbb C^4, \phi \colon U \to X$ such that $\phi$ is defined by rational functions (i.e., quotients of polynomials).

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Cool ! what are the references for current state of art ? –  Alexander Chervov Jul 24 '12 at 9:57
Basically nothing is known. On the other hand, it is easy to construct cubics that are rationals - e.g. cubics containing two planes. There are two conjectural descriptions of the locus of rational cubics inside the moduli space of cubics: one is due to Hassett and Harris; math.sunysb.edu/Videos/AGNES/video.php?f=04-Harris is video of a talk by Harris on the question; for Hassett's related results search "Hassett cubic fourfolds" on google scholar. Kuznetsov has a conjecture in terms of derived categories, the reference is: front.math.ucdavis.edu/0808.3351. –  Arend Bayer Jul 24 '12 at 22:03

Is there such $n\in\mathbb{N}$ that ${^n\pi}\in\mathbb{N}$? (see tetration)

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The following conjecture by Carsten Thomassen:

If $G$ is a 3-connected graph, every longest cycle in $G$ has a chord.

Thomassen has proven the conjecture true for 3-connected cubic graphs.

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What is the largest possible volume of the convex hull of a space curve having unit length?

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It was discussed here: mathoverflow.net/questions/83026/… –  Vladimir Reshetnikov Jul 28 '12 at 21:10

Is there a positive integer which is both triangular and factorial except these obvious examples: $1, 6, 120$? (Tomaszewski conjecture, http://oeis.org/A000217)

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• Is Hilbert's tenth problem for Diophantine equations in rational numbers decidable?
• Is Hilbert's tenth problem for Diophantine equations of power $3$ decidable?
• Is there a universal Diophantine equation of power $3$?
• Is there a universal Diophantine equation containing less than $9$ variables? If so, what is the minimal number of variables? What minimal power can be achieved for that number of variables?
• Is there a universal Diophantine equation that can be written using less than $100$ arithmetic operations (additions or multiplications)? If so, what is the minimal number of operations?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keller%27s_conjecture

From Wikipedia:

Keller's conjecture is the conjecture introduced by Ott-Heinrich Keller (1930) that in any tiling of Euclidean space by identical hypercubes there are two cubes that meet face to face.

Keller's original cube-tiling conjecture remains open in dimension 7.

Conjecture was shown to be true in dimensions at most 6 by Perron (1940a, 1940b). However, for higher dimensions it is false, as was shown in dimensions at least 10 by Lagarias and Shor (1992) and in dimensions at least 8 by Mackey (2002), using a reformulation of the problem in terms of the clique number of certain graphs now known as Keller graphs. Although this graph-theoretic version of the conjecture is now resolved for all dimensions, Keller's original cube-tiling conjecture remains open in dimension 7.

The related Minkowski lattice cube-tiling conjecture states that, whenever a tiling of space by identical cubes has the additional property that the cube centers form a lattice, some cubes must meet face to face. It was proved by György Hajós in 1942.

Szabó (1993), Shor (2004), and Zong (2005) give surveys of work on Keller's conjecture and related problems.

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What is the least $V$ such that any convex body of unit volume can be fit into a tetrahedron of volume $V$? It is known that $V \ge 9/2$ and conjectured that $V = 9/2$.

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Is the density of $1$s in the Kolakoski sequence $122112122122112112212112\dots$ (Wikipedia, OEIS) equal to $1/2$? Also, does every consecutive block, which occurs at all in the Kolakoski sequence, occur infinitely often?

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N. M. Katz: "Simple Things we don't know": https://web.math.princeton.edu/~nmk/pisa16.pdf

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What is the least $S$ (if any) such that any subset of a plane of area $S$ contains $3$ vertices of a triangle of unit area?

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Ore's odd Harmonic number conjecture

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This is a notorious problem. The OP asked for “not too famous”. –  Emil Jeřábek Jun 27 '12 at 14:18
• Is the Ring of Periods actually a field? (most likely, no)
• Is the equality of periods decidable? (hopefully, yes)
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problems which anyone can understand ? Uhhh –  Denis Serre Sep 25 '12 at 7:50

Is there a triangle that can be cut into $7$ congruent triangles? (no)

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Nice problems but what are the sources? –  Alexander Chervov Jul 24 '12 at 20:23
I heard this in a personal communication. But it turns out this is already settled negatively in 2008: michaelbeeson.com/research/papers/SevenTriangles.pdf –  Vladimir Reshetnikov Jul 28 '12 at 20:34

Is there any odd perfect number?

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Methinks this one is both pretty famous and long open... –  J. H. S. Jun 14 '13 at 15:21

The list coloring conjecture: A list of colors is assigned to each edge of a finite graph $G$. A "list coloring" of $G$ is an edge-coloring such that (1) each edge is colored with a color from its list, and (2) edges that meet at a vertex have different colors. Suppose the graph $G$ admits a list coloring when the list $\{1,2,\dots,n\}$ is assigned to every edge; does it still admit a list coloring when an arbitrary list of $n$ colors is assigned to each edge?

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Can a disk be dissected into two or more pieces, with its centre lying within one of the pieces?

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Surely there is a missing condition here. Maybe the pieces are required to be congruent? –  zeb Mar 11 at 11:50