We provide an alternate proof of the central limit theorem for the uctuations of the size of the giant component in sparse random graphs. In contrast with previous proofs, the argument investigates a depth-first search algorithm, through first-passage analysis using couplings and martingale limit theorems. The analysis of the first passage limiting distribution for sequences of Markov chains might be interesting in its own right. This proof naturally provides an upper bound for the rate of convergence.

A cladogram is a tree with labelled leaves and unlabelled degree-3 branchpoints. A certain Markov chain on the set of n-leaf cladograms consists of removing a random leaf (and its incident edge) and re-attaching it to a random edge. We show that the mixing time (time to approach the uniform stationary distribution) for this chain is at least O(n2) and at most O(n3).

Let M(n, A) denote the maximum possible cardinality of a family of binary strings of length n, such that for every four distinct members of the family there is a coordinate in which exactly two of them have a 1. We prove that M(n, A) [les ] 20.78n for all sufficiently large n. Let M(n, C) denote the maximum possible cardinality of a family of binary strings of length n, such that for every four distinct members of the family there is a coordinate in which exactly one of them has a 1. We show that there is an absolute constant c < 1/2 such that M(n, C) [les ] 2cn for all sufficiently large n. Some related questions are discussed as well.

A family of subsets of an n-set is k-locally thin if, for every k of its member sets, the ground set has at least one element contained in exactly 1 of them. We derive new asymptotic upper bounds for the maximum cardinality of locally thin set families for every even k. This improves on previous results of two of the authors with Monti.

The core of a graph G is the subgraph GΔ induced by the vertices of maximum degree. We define the deleted core D(G) of G. We extend an earlier sufficient condition due to Hoffman [7] for a graph H to be the core of a Class 2 graph, and thereby provide a stronger sufficient condition. The new sufficient condition is in terms of D(H). We show that in some circumstances our condition is necessary; but it is not necessary in general.

Two results dealing with the relation between the smallest eigenvalue of a graph and its bipartite subgraphs are obtained. The first result is that the smallest eigenvalue μ of any non-bipartite graph on n vertices with diameter D and maximum degree Δ satisfies μ [ges ] −Δ + 1/(D+1)n. This improves previous estimates and is tight up to a constant factor. The second result is the determination of the precise approximation guarantee of the MAX CUT algorithm of Goemans and Williamson for graphs G = (V, E) in which the size of the max cut is at least A[mid ]E[mid ], for all A between 0.845 and 1. This extends a result of Karloff.

For a subgroup W of the hyperoctahedral group On which is generated by reflections, we consider the linear dependence matroid MW on the column vectors corresponding to the reflections in W. We determine all possible automorphism groups of MW and determine when W ≅ = Aut(MW). This allows us to connect combinatorial and geometric symmetry. Applications to zonotopes are also considered. Signed graphs are used as a tool for constructing the automorphisms.

Answering a question of Wilf, we show that, if n is sufficiently large, then one cannot cover an n × p(n) rectangle using each of the p(n) distinct Ferrers shapes of size n exactly once. Moreover, the maximum number of pairwise distinct, non-overlapping Ferrers shapes that can be packed in such a rectangle is only Θ(p(n)/log n):

This work deals with convergence theorems and bounds on the cost of several layout measures for lattice graphs, random lattice graphs and sparse random geometric graphs. Specifically, we consider the following problems: Minimum Linear Arrangement, Cutwidth, Sum Cut, Vertex Separation, Edge Bisection and Vertex Bisection. For full square lattices, we give optimal layouts for the problems still open. For arbitrary lattice graphs, we present best possible bounds disregarding a constant factor. We apply percolation theory to the study of lattice graphs in a probabilistic setting. In particular, we deal with the subcritical regime that this class of graphs exhibits and characterize the behaviour of several layout measures in this space of probability. We extend the results on random lattice graphs to random geometric graphs, which are graphs whose nodes are spread at random in the unit square and whose edges connect pairs of points which are within a given distance. We also characterize the behaviour of several layout measures on random geometric graphs in their subcritical regime. Our main results are convergence theorems that can be viewed as an analogue of the Beardwood, Halton and Hammersley theorem for the Euclidean TSP on random points in the unit square.

We prove that if an involution ϕ is an automorphism of a connected binary matroid M then there is a hyperplane of M that is invariant under ϕ. We also consider extensions of this result for higher connectivity.

The maximum expected length of an increasing subsequence which can be selected by a non-anticipating policy from a random permutation of 1, …, n is known to be asymptotic to √2n. We give a new proof of this fact and demonstrate a policy which achieves this value.

Vapnik and Chervonenkis proposed in [7] a combinatorial notion of dimension that reflects the ‘combinatorial complexity’ of families of sets. In the three decades that have passed since that paper, this notion – the Vapnik–Chervonenkis dimension (VC-dimension) – has been discovered to be of primal importance in quite a wide variety of topics in both pure mathematics and theoretical computer science.

In this paper we turn our attention to classes with infinite VC-dimension, a realm thrown into one big bag by the usual VC-dimension analysis. We identify three levels of combinatorial complexity of classes with infinite VC-dimension. We show that these levels fall under the set-theoretic definition of σ-ideals (in particular, each of them is closed under countable unions), and that they are all distinct. The first of these levels (i.e., the family of ‘small’ infinite-dimensional classes) coincides with the family of classes which are non-uniformly PAC-learnable.

Maybe the most surprising contribution of this work is the discovery of an intimate relation between the VC-dimension of a class of subsets of the natural numbers and the Lebesgue measure of the set of reals defined when these subsets are viewed as binary representations of real numbers.

As a by-product, our investigation of the VC-dimension-induced ideals over the reals yields a new proper extension of the Lebesgue measure. Another offshoot of this work is a simple result in probability theory, showing that, given any sequence of pairwise independent events, any random event is eventually independent of the members of the sequence.

Let F = {G1, …, Gt} be a family of n-vertex graphs defined on the same vertex-set V, and let k be a positive integer. A subset of vertices D ⊂ V is called an (F, k)-core if, for each v ∈ V and for each i = 1, …, t, there are at least k neighbours of v in Gi that belong to D. The subset D is called a connected (F, k)-core if the subgraph induced by D in each Gi is connected. Let δi be the minimum degree of Gi and let δ(F) = minti=1δi. Clearly, an (F, k)-core exists if and only if δ(F) [ges ] k, and a connected (F, k)-core exists if and only if δ(F) [ges ] k and each Gi is connected. Let c(k, F) and cc(k, F) be the minimum size of an (F, k)-core and a connected (F, k)-core, respectively. The following asymptotic results are proved for every t < ln ln δ and k < √lnδ:

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The results are asymptotically tight for infinitely many families F. The results unify and extend related results on dominating sets, strong dominating sets and connected dominating sets.

Let Gp be a random graph on 2d vertices where edges are selected independently with a fixed probability p > ¼, and let H be the d-dimensional hypercube Qd. We answer a question of Bollobás by showing that, as d → ∞, Gp almost surely has a spanning subgraph isomorphic to H. In fact we prove a stronger result which implies that the number of d-cubes in G ∈ [Gscr ](n, M) is asymptotically normally distributed for M in a certain range. The result proved can be applied to many other graphs, also improving previous results for the lattice, that is, the 2-dimensional square grid. The proof uses the second moment method – writing X for the number of subgraphs of G isomorphic to H, where G is a suitable random graph, we expand the variance of X as a sum over all subgraphs of H itself. As the subgraphs of H may be quite complicated, most of the work is in estimating the various terms of this sum.

In this paper, we study a statistical property of classes of real-valued functions that we call approximation from interpolated examples. We derive a characterization of function classes that have this property, in terms of their ‘fat-shattering function’, a notion that has proved useful in computational learning theory. The property is central to a problem of learning real-valued functions from random examples in which we require satisfactory performance from every algorithm that returns a function which approximately interpolates the training examples.

We examine the specialization to simple matroids of certain problems in extremal matroid theory that are concerned with bounded cocircuit size. Assume that each cocircuit of a simple matroid M has at most d elements. We show that if M has rank 3, then M has at most d + [lfloor ]√d[rfloor ] + 1 points, and we classify the rank-3 simple matroids M that have exactly d + [lfloor ]√d[rfloor ] points. We show that if M is a connected matroid of rank 4 and d is q3 with q > 1, then M has at most q3 + q2 + q + 1 points; this upper bound is strict unless q is a prime power, in which case the only such matroid with exactly q3 + q2 + q + 1 points is the projective geometry PG(3, q). We also show that if d is q4 for a positive integer q and if M has rank 5 and is vertically 5-connected, then M has at most q4 + q3 + q2 + q + 1 points; this upper bound is strict unless q is a prime power, in which case PG(4, q) is the only such matroid that attains this bound.

We prove that if the edge probability p(n) satisfies n−1/4+ε [les ] p(n) [les ] 3/4, where 0 < ε < 1/4 is a constant, then the choice number and the chromatic number of the random graph G(n, p) are almost surely asymptotically equal.

Let G be an abelian group. For a subset A ⊂ G, denote by 2 ∧ A the set of sums of two different elements of A. A conjecture by Erdős and Heilbronn, first proved by Dias da Silva and Hamidoune, states that, when G has prime order, [mid ]2 ∧ A[mid ] [ges ] min([mid ]G[mid ], 2[mid ]A[mid ] − 3).

We prove that, for abelian groups of odd order (respectively, cyclic groups), the inequality [mid ]2 ∧ A[mid ] [ges ] min([mid ]G[mid ], 3[mid ]A[mid ]/2) holds when A is a generating set of G, 0 ∈ A and [mid ]A[mid ] [ges ] 21 (respectively, [mid ]A[mid ] [ges ] 33). The structure of the sets for which equality holds is also determined.

We prove the following conjecture of J. van den Berg and H. Kesten. For any events [Ascr ] and [Bscr ] in a product probability space, Prob([Ascr ]□[Bscr ]) [les ] Prob([Ascr ])Prob([Bscr ]), where [Ascr ]□[Bscr ] is the event that [Ascr ] and [Bscr ] occur ‘disjointly’.

Consider the integer lattice L = ℤ2. For some m [ges ] 4, let us colour each column of this lattice independently and uniformly with one of m colours. We do the same for the rows, independently of the columns. A point of L will be called blocked if its row and column have the same colour. We say that this random configuration percolates if there is a path in L starting at the origin, consisting of rightward and upward unit steps, avoiding the blocked points. As a problem arising in distributed computing, it has been conjectured that for m [ges ] 4 the configuration percolates with positive probability. This question remains open, but we prove that the probability that there is percolation to distance n but not to infinity is not exponentially small in n. This narrows the range of methods available for proving the conjecture.