Related papers: Optimizing diversity

The well-known Erdos-Ko-Rado Theorem states that if F is a family of k-element subsets of {1,2,...,n} (n>2k-1) such that every pair of elements in F has a nonempty intersection, then |F| is at most $\binom{n-1}{k-1}$. The theorem also…

Given a family $\mathcal{F}\subset 2^{[n]}$ and $1\leq i\neq j\leq n$, we use $\mathcal{F}(\bar{i},j)$ to denote the family $\{F\setminus \{j\}\colon F\in \mathcal{F},\ F\cap \{i,j\}=\{j\}\}$. The sturdiness of $\mathcal{F}$ is defined as…

A basic goal in complexity theory is to understand the communication complexity of number-on-the-forehead problems $f\colon(\{0,1\}^n)^{k}\to\{0,1\}$ with $k\gg\log n$ parties. We study the problems of inner product and set disjointness and…

We consider families of $k$-subsets of $\{1, \dots, n\}$, where $n$ is a multiple of $k$, which have no perfect matching. An equivalent condition for a family $\mathcal{F}$ to have no perfect matching is for there to be a blocking set,…

We determine, within 1, the value of N for which sum (s1 choose i)(s2 choose N)(s1 choose N-i)(N choose i) achieves its maximum value. Here s1 and s2 are fixed integers. This problem arises in studying the most likely value for the size of…

Let ${\rm ind}(G)$ be the number of independent sets in a graph $G$. We show that if $G$ has maximum degree at most $5$ then $$ {\rm ind}(G) \leq 2^{{\rm iso}(G)} \prod_{uv \in E(G)} {\rm ind}(K_{d(u),d(v)})^{\frac{1}{d(u)d(v)}} $$ (where…

Given a graph, the sparsest cut problem asks for a subset of vertices whose edge expansion (the normalized cut given by the subset) is minimized. In this paper, we study a generalization of this problem seeking for $ k $ disjoint subsets of…

An assignment problem is the optimization problem of finding, in an m by n matrix of nonnegative real numbers, k entries, no two in the same row or column, such that their sum is minimal. Such an optimization problem is called a random…

Let $G=(V(G),E(G))$ be a graph with set of vertices $V(G)$ and set of edges $E(G)$. A subset $S$ of $E(G)$ is called a $k$-nearly independent edge subsets if there are exactly $k$ pairs of elements of $S$ that share a common end. $Z_k(G)$…

We study the SHORTEST PATH problem with positive disjunctive constraints from the perspective of parameterized complexity. For positive disjunctive constraints, there are certain pair of edges such that any feasible solution must contain at…

Galvin showed that for all fixed $\delta$ and sufficiently large $n$, the $n$-vertex graph with minimum degree $\delta$ that admits the most independent sets is the complete bipartite graph $K_{\delta,n-\delta}$. He conjectured that except…

In this paper we study the following problem: Given $k$ disjoint sets of points, $P_1, \ldots, P_k$ on the plane, find a minimum cardinality set $\mathcal{T}$ of arbitrary rectangles such that each rectangle contains points of just one set…

Sidon sets are those sets such that the sums of two of its elements never coincide. They go back to the 30s when Sidon asked for the maximal size of a subset of consecutive integers with that property. This question is now answered in a…

Let $k$, $t$ and $m$ be positive integers. A $k$-multiset of $[m]$ is a collection of $k$ elements of $[m]$ with repetition and without ordering. We use $\left(\binom {[m]}{k}\right)$ to denote all the $k$-multisets of $[m]$. Two multiset…

For an $n$-element set $X$ let $\binom{X}{k}$ be the collection of all its $k$-subsets. Two families of sets $\mathcal A$ and $\mathcal B$ are called cross-intersecting if $A\cap B \neq \emptyset$ holds for all $A\in\mathcal A$,…

We say that $k$ graphs $G_1,G_2,\dots,G_k$ on a common vertex set of size $n$ contain a rainbow copy of a graph $H$ if their union contains a copy of $H$ with each edge belonging to a distinct $G_i$. We provide a counterexample to a…

A family of $k$-element subsets of an $n$-element set is called 3-wise intersecting if any three members in the family have non-empty intersection. We determine the maximum size of such families exactly or asymptotically. One of our results…

An ordered set $S$ of vertices of a graph $G$ is a resolving set for $G$ if every vertex is uniquely determined by its vector of distances to the vertices in $S$. The metric dimension of G is the minimum cardinality of a resolving set. In…

Let $n\geqslant 3$ be a natural number. We study the problem to find the smallest $r$ such that there is a family $\mathcal{A}$ of 2-subsets and 3-subsets of $[n]=\{1,2,...,n\}$ with the following properties: (1) $\mathcal{A}$ is an…

Fix positive integers $k$ and $d$. We show that, as $n\to\infty$, any set system $\mathcal{A} \subset 2^{[n]}$ for which the VC dimension of $\{ \triangle_{i=1}^k S_i \mid S_i \in \mathcal{A}\}$ is at most $d$ has size at most…