Pólya Conjecture
Let
be a positive
integer and
the number of (not necessarily distinct)
prime factors of
(with
). Let
be the number of positive
integers
with an odd
number of prime factors, and
the number
of positive integers
with an even number of prime factors.
Pólya (1919) conjectured that
is
, where
is the
Liouville function.
The conjecture was made in 1919, and disproven by Haselgrove (1958) using a method due to Ingham (1942). Lehman (1960) found the first explicit counterexample,
, and the smallest counterexample
was found by Tanaka (1980). The first
for which
are
, 4, 6, 10, 16, 26, 40, 96, 586, 906150256, ...
(Tanaka 1980, OEIS A028488). It is unknown
if
changes sign infinitely often (Tanaka
1980).
pólya conjecture

