Elementary proof of 2^n > 2^(n-k) (3^k - 2^k) / (2^n - 3^k) provided 2^n > 3^k

OK I made a mistake in this message, the ratio is inversed:

f(n,k)/f(n,k+1) = \frac{2(3^k-2^k)(2^n - 3^{k+1})}{(2^n - 3^k)(3^{k+1}-2^{k+1})}

but Python code was correct and what followed as well, i.e. we have:

f(n,k)/f(n,k+1) < \frac{2}{3}

But it gives only a lowerbound instead of an upperbound on the inverse: i.e. f(n,k+1)/f(n,k) > \frac{3}{2} which is interesting but not super useful, we really need an upperbound to get our result.

Interestingly, in experiments, it is only extremal values of k that are problematic:

n=47
	 k 	  f(n,k) 	 f(n,k+1)/f(n,k)
	 1 	  0.500 	 2.500
	 2 	  1.250 	 1.900
	 3 	  2.375 	 1.711
	 4 	  4.063 	 1.623
	 5 	  6.594 	 1.576
	 6 	  10.391 	 1.548
	 7 	  16.086 	 1.531
	 8 	  24.629 	 1.520
	 9 	  37.443 	 1.513
	 10 	  56.665 	 1.509
	 11 	  85.498 	 1.506
	 12 	  128.746 	 1.504
	 13 	  193.620 	 1.503
	 14 	  290.929 	 1.502
	 15 	  436.894 	 1.501
	 16 	  655.841 	 1.501
	 17 	  984.262 	 1.501
	 18 	  1476.896 	 1.500
	 19 	  2215.856 	 1.500
	 20 	  3324.339 	 1.500
	 21 	  4987.256 	 1.500
	 22 	  7482.496 	 1.501
	 23 	  11229.253 	 1.502
	 24 	  16866.961 	 1.506
	 25 	  25403.104 	 1.518
	 26 	  38572.410 	 1.557
	 27 	  60068.847 	 1.694
	 28 	  101763.246 	 2.452
	 29 	  249502.451 	 -1.660

You can see that the ratio behaves like 3/2 = 1.5 in the middle but is disturbed for high values of k. But the damage always seems to be contained at the very end (approx 7 or 8 values of k before cutoff), see this example for n=200, I also tried for n=1000 with similar result.

So, the quest to an elementary proof of

2^n > 2^{n-k} \frac{3^k - 2^k}{2^n - 3^k}

Remains open :smiley:

2 Likes