Salem–Spencer set

In mathematics, and in particular in arithmetic combinatorics, a Salem-Spencer set is a set of numbers no three of which form an arithmetic progression. Salem–Spencer sets are also called 3-AP-free sequences or progression-free sets. They have also been called non-averaging sets, but this term has also been used to denote a set of integers none of which can be obtained as the average of any subset of the other numbers. Salem-Spencer sets are named after Raphaël Salem and Donald C. Spencer, who showed in 1942 that Salem–Spencer sets can have nearly-linear size. However a later theorem of Klaus Roth shows that the size is always less than linear.