cert-machine · the registry's asterisks

Five asterisks, replayed

The optimization-constants registry marks a bound with an asterisk when its verification is "at minimal levels". Five of its bounds rest on arithmetic small enough to decide exactly. Three hold as printed — two entropy laws and one Boolean function on 18 variables. For Turán's power sums the limiting certificate holds and the passage to it is the author's argument. The sum–product row quotes a constant its own source calls only "suggested", and the source's calculation cannot reach it; what that source proves holds. One of the checkers published with the entropy laws would also have accepted a false bound.

Decided: that the law each cited certificate writes down gives the ratio the registry prints — a lower bound on the constant, never its value. Not decided: the upper bounds, the constants themselves, and the registry's other asterisked rows. The asterisk is the maintainers' to keep or remove; this page is evidence. The 147-point checker's 53-bit comparison was reported to its author on 2026-10-05 (a comment on gist CoolRmal/5368357c); the replay was proposed to the registry as teorth/optimizationproblems PR #216 the same day.

tl;dr
  • The finding. Three hold as printed, one partly, one is repaired. C71 > 6.521845710923046575 is CERTIFIED from its truth table (§3); C84b ≤ 1.999281 holds only as 1.9993, what its source proves (§4); C42 ≤ 0.6906538 rests on a limiting inequality that holds, |Y|/D ≤ 0.6906536951…, and on an asymptotic argument in prose (§5). And C3b ≥ 1.77898884 and C3c ≥ 1.6747338950414058 are CERTIFIED from the certificates the registry cites: the ratios are 1.7789888414206935498051… and 1.6747338950414058700631…, each enclosed to 40 digits. The 147-point certificate's own 60-digit bound holds, so does the 95-point bound it superseded, and the improvement the registry prints, 2.06 × 10−11, is the rounding of the certified gap. And the checker published with the 147-point certificate prints OK for C3c >= 1.6747338950414059, which is false: it encloses the ratio at 100 digits, then compares in doubles.
  • The mechanism. A law on Z² with rational weights gives C ≥ H(X−Y) / max of the entropies of the other forms. The pushforwards are exact; each entropy term is an interval whose logarithm is rounded outward. Two implementations share no code with each other or with the claimants: instruments/sumdiff (JavaScript, BigInt and dyadic intervals at 128–1024 bits) and tools/verify_sumdiff.py (the Python standard library, decimal at 120 digits).
  • Check it. python3 tools/verify_sumdiff.py — standard library only, four CERTIFIED and one red control. node instruments/sumdiff/battery.js — 22 checks, 7 red controls.
asterisked bounds decided
5
C3b, C3c and C71 CERTIFIED; C42 PARTIAL; C84b REPAIRED. The registry's table is pinned at commit 2c1968cd.
digits of each ratio
40
Enclosed, not estimated; the 60-digit bound the 147-point certificate prints is decided at 256 bits.
implementations
2
JavaScript over BigInt and dyadic intervals; Python over the standard library. They agree to every digit shown.
false bounds the checker accepts
2
Observed, run on the pinned script: its last comparison is at 53 bits. Both are refuted here.
§1 · the claims

What the registry prints, and what the certificates give

claimbycertificateverdictthe ratio, enclosed
C3b >= 1.77898884 *Mosaic Intelligence (2026)13 points, denominator of 37 digits
2efe99360a1f…
CERTIFIED1.7789888414206935498051938874772894343542
1.7789888414206935498051938874772894344895
C3c >= 1.6747338950414058 *Y. Lin (2026)147 points, denominator of 321 digits
b3dc9587ba7a…
CERTIFIED1.6747338950414058700631357567222139986329
1.6747338950414058700631357567222139998144
C3c >= 1.6747338950208249 (superseded)Mosaic Intelligence (2026)95 points, denominator of 201 digits
2ebd7ba7a32e…
CERTIFIED1.6747338950208249933782075776022651846547
1.6747338950208249933782075776022651853483

Also decided from the same certificates: the 13-point certificate's printed "true value" 1.778988841420693549 is a truncation of the ratio (it is CERTIFIED and the next value up is REFUTED); the 95-point certificate's 39-digit bound and the 147-point certificate's 60-digit bound are CERTIFIED; the 147-point ratio exceeds the 95-point one by 2.058080 × 10^-11…, which rounds to the 2.06 × 10−11 the registry prints.

§2 · the checker

What a checker's last line proves

The 147-point certificate ships a checker (check_cert.py, pinned here by sha256 and not copied). It computes the ratio in interval arithmetic at 100 digits, which is right, and then decides the claim with mpmath.mpf(lo_str) >= mpmath.mpf(claimed) in mpmath's default context — 53 bits, a double. Every decimal within a double of the true bound compares equal to it. Run on the pinned script with claims written here:

claimedthe checker printeddecided here
1.674733895041405870063135756722213999136383713818148696811828OKCERTIFIED here (the certificate's own bound)
1.674733895041405870063135756722213999136383713818148696811900OKnot certified here: above the certified lower end at the 58th decimal
1.6747338950414058800OKREFUTED here: above the ratio at the 17th significant digit
1.67473389504140590OKREFUTED here

The bound the registry prints is true, and it is decided above without that checker. The point is the checker: C3c >= 1.6747338950414059 is false at the seventeenth significant digit, is the same double as the true 60-digit bound, and prints OK. A verifier's last comparison has to be as exact as its enclosure, or the enclosure proves nothing the output line says. The Mosaic Intelligence checkers set the working precision to 80 digits before comparing and do not have this weakness. And one of our own two implementations had its mirror image while this page was built: Python's unary minus on a Decimal rounds to the default context's 28 digits, which moved the first draft's ratio at the 28th digit until the two implementations were compared.

§3 · the third asterisk

C71: a Boolean function on 18 variables

The Fourier entropy–influence constant is the least C with H[f] ≤ C·I[f] for every Boolean f, where H is the entropy of the Fourier weights (base 2) and I the total influence. For a balanced g the amplification rule of O'Donnell–Tan (2013) and Hod (2017, Prop. 1.2), cited and not re-proved here, gives C71 ≥ H[g]/(I[g] − 1). The registry's asterisked C71 > 6.521845710923046575 cites a truth table on 18 variables published by Numaro (numaro.tech, "AI Autoresearch"), Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.21497769.

§4 · the fourth asterisk

C84b: a suggested constant, quoted as a bound

The registry's asterisked row for the real sum–product exponent reads C84b ≤ 1.999281: "a ChatGPT 5.5 long-thinking optimization of the explicit constant of [BSSZ2026, §5] giving c ≥ 0.000719. Unverified." The note it cites states its theorem with 0.0007 and adds: "The optimized value suggested by the same calculation is about 0.000719, but 0.0007 is the safer quoted constant."

§5 · the fifth asterisk

C42: a limiting inequality, and the argument that reaches it

Turán's pure power-sum constant is the limsup of R_n, the least possible max over k ≤ n of |Σ z_iᵏ| when max |z_i| = 1. The registry's asterisked C42 ≤ 0.6906538 cites S. Griego's certificate: power sums set to s = 1 − α on the first τn indices, to η in the middle, and to values on the last block that force b_n = 0, so the numbers built from them have every power sum at most C in modulus — for all large n, by an asymptotic argument that reduces everything to four exact facts.

§6 · how

How it is decided