On the distribution of sums of residues

Abstract

We generalize and solve the $\roman{mod}\,q$ analogue of a problem of Littlewood and Offord, raised by Vaughan and Wooley, concerning the distribution of the $2^n$ sums of the form ${\sum }_{i=1}^n{\epsilon }_i{a}_i$, where each ${\epsilon }_i$ is $0$ or $1$. For all $q$, $n$, $k$ we determine the maximum, over all reduced residues $a_i$ and all sets $P$ consisting of $k$ arbitrary residues, of the number of these sums that belong to $P$.

arXiv comment5 pages