We provide a uniform bound on the partial sums of multiplicative functions under very general hypotheses. As an application, we give a nearly optimal estimate for the count of $n \le x$ for which the Alladi–Erdős function $A(n) = \sum_{p^k \parallel n} k p$ takes values in a given residue class modulo q, where q varies uniformly up to a fixed power of $\log x$. We establish a similar result for the equidistribution of the Euler totient function $\phi(n)$ among the coprime residues to the ‘correct’ moduli q that vary uniformly in a similar range and also quantify the failure of equidistribution of the values of $\phi(n)$ among the coprime residue classes to the ‘incorrect’ moduli.

Let $k\geq 2$ be an integer. We prove that the 2-automatic sequence of odious numbers $\mathcal {O}$ is a k-additive uniqueness set for multiplicative functions: if a multiplicative function f satisfies a multivariate Cauchy’s functional equation $f(x_1+x_2+\cdots +x_k)=f(x_1)+f(x_2)+\cdots +f(x_k)$ for arbitrary $x_1,\ldots ,x_k\in \mathcal {O}$, then f is the identity function $f(n)=n$ for all $n\in \mathbb {N}$.

Let f : ℕ → ℂ be a bounded multiplicative function. Let a be a fixed non-zero integer (say a = 1). Then f is well distributed on the progression n ≡ a (mod q) ⊂ {1,…, X}, for almost all primes q ∈ [Q, 2Q], for Q as large as X 1/2+1/78−o(1).

We show that if the pair $(f,g)$ of functions mapping a linear space $X$ over the field $\mathbb{K}=\mathbb{R}\text{ or }\mathbb{C}$ into $\mathbb{K}$ satisfies the composite equation

$$\begin{eqnarray}f(x+g(x)y)=f(x)f(y)\quad \text{for }x,y\in X\end{eqnarray}$$

$f$

$f$

$g$

A colouring of the vertices of a regular polygon is symmetric if it is invariant under some reflection of the polygon. We count the number of symmetric $r$-colourings of the vertices of a regular $n$-gon.