English

A counter-intuitive correlation in a random tournament

Probability 2009-09-04 v2 Combinatorics

Abstract

Consider a randomly oriented graph G=(V,E)G=(V,E) and let aa, ss and bb be three distinct vertices in VV. We study the correlation between the events {as}\{a\to s\} and {sb}\{s\to b\}. We show that, when GG is the complete graph KnK_n, the correlation is negative for n=3n=3, zero for n=4n=4, and that, counter-intuitively, it is positive for n5n\ge 5. We also show that the correlation is always negative when GG is a cycle, CnC_n, and negative or zero when GG is a tree (or a forest).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0906.0240,
  title  = {A counter-intuitive correlation in a random tournament},
  author = {Sven Erick Alm and Svante Linusson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0906.0240},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

11 pages, improved exposition of Section 4

R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:08:15.636Z