English

Optimal stopping for many connected components in a graph

Combinatorics 2021-11-30 v2 Probability

Abstract

We study a new optimal stopping problem: Let GG be a fixed graph with nn vertices which become active on-line in time, one by another, in a random order. The active part of GG is the subgraph induced by the active vertices. Find a stopping algorithm that maximizes the expected number of connected components of the active part of GG. We prove that if GG is a kk-tree, then there is no asymptotically better algorithm than `wait until 1k+1\frac{1}{k+1} fraction of vertices'. The maximum expected number of connected components equals to (kk(k+1)k+1+o(1))n.\left(\frac{k^k}{(k+1)^{k+1}}+o(1)\right)n.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2001.07870,
  title  = {Optimal stopping for many connected components in a graph},
  author = {Michał Lasoń},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.07870},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

minor corrections

R2 v1 2026-06-23T13:17:19.069Z