What are some properties proved to have largest elements?

Question

I know of various properties of numbers that are known to have no largest element (like natural numbers, primes, etc.) and I know of unproven conjectures that certain properties have a largest element (twin primes, etc.) but I don't remember examples of properties that have been proved to have a largest element, at least within number theory. I suspect there are some, so I thought I'd ask here.

Outside of number theory, I know of some geometric ones -- like the number of sides in a Platonic solid.

What's Special About This Number? may be a useful source.

https://oeis.org/search?q=keyword%3Afull&sort=&language=&go=Search may give a start (though a lot of these are finite for stupid reasons "divisors of 24") — Hagen von Eitzen, Sep 10 '18 at 06:23
Ah, OEIS with keyword:full (defined as: "full: The full sequence is given, either in the DATA section or in the b-file (implies the sequence is finite and has keyword "fini")". Good idea! — JesseW, Sep 10 '18 at 06:25
fini might be even better and could include cases where finiteness is known, but the largest element is not. Still, there are nice finds, such as $\tau(n)=\sigma(n)\implies n\le 30$ and of course Heegner numbres — Hagen von Eitzen, Sep 10 '18 at 06:30

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 10 '18 at 06:29

3

The set $\{n\in\mathbb{N}\,|\,n\text{ and }n+1\text{ are perfect powers}\}$ has a largest element: $8$. Actually, it's its only element.

answered Sep 10 '18 at 06:29

José Carlos Santos

427,504

That's the kind of thing I was thinking of, thank you! – JesseW Sep 10 '18 at 06:30
The only reason I haven't accepted this answer yet is I'd ideally prefer an answer with multiple sets of varying sizes. – JesseW Sep 11 '18 at 15:58
1

@JesseW I understand that. Please don't feel pressured. – José Carlos Santos Sep 11 '18 at 16:46

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 11 '18 at 19:11

2

Here are two examples:

Factorions are numbers that are the sum of the factorial of their digits. For instance, $145 = 1!+4!+5!= 1+24+120=145$. The largest factorion is 40585.

Numbers that are the cube of their digit sum, such as $512 = (5+1+2)^{3} = 8^{3}$. The largest is 19683.

answered Sep 11 '18 at 19:11

Leo Bloom

318

Very nice! The (purely stylistic) flaw I see in these is that they are dependent on the base used (I think). I'd love to hear of ones that aren't... – JesseW Sep 21 '18 at 05:49
Their entries are: https://oeis.org/A014080 and https://oeis.org/A061209 – JesseW Sep 21 '18 at 05:53
And the (non-finite, although I don't know if it has been proved) generalized sequence is https://oeis.org/A193163 – JesseW Sep 21 '18 at 05:56

What are some properties proved to have largest elements?

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