Related papers: Optimizing diversity
We call a family $\mathcal{F}$ of subsets of $[n]$ $s$-saturated if it contains no $s$ pairwise disjoint sets, and moreover no set can be added to $\mathcal{F}$ while preserving this property (here $[n] = \{1,\ldots,n\}$). More than 40…
In 2004, Zhi-Wei Sun posed the following conjecture: If a_1G_1,...,a_kG_k (k>1) are finitely many pairwise disjoint left cosets in a group G with all the indices [G:G_i] finite, then for some 1\le i<j\le k, the greatest common divisor of…
The celebrated Erd\H{o}s-Ko-Rado theorem shows that for $n \ge 2k$ the largest intersecting $k$-uniform set family on $[n]$ has size $\binom{n-1}{k-1}$. It is natural to ask how far from intersecting larger set families must be. Katona,…
Given a digraph $D=(V,A)$ and a positive integer $k$, a subset $B\subseteq A$ is called a \textbf{$k$-union-arborescence}, if it is the disjoint union of $k$ spanning arborescences. When also arc-costs $c:A\to \mathbb{R}$ are given,…
In a classical covering problem, we are given a set of requests that we need to satisfy (fully or partially), by buying a subset of items at minimum cost. For example, in the k-MST problem we want to find the cheapest tree spanning at least…
A $k$-uniform family of subsets of $[n]$ is intersecting if it does not contain a disjoint pair of sets. The study of intersecting families is central to extremal set theory, dating back to the seminal Erd\H{o}s-Ko-Rado theorem of 1961 that…
In a graph $G = (V,E)$, a k-ruling set $S$ is one in which all vertices $V$ \ $S$ are at most $k$ distance from $S$. Finding a minimum k-ruling set is intrinsically linked to the minimum dominating set problem and maximal independent set…
We study the fair k-set selection problem where we aim to select $k$ sets from a given set system such that the (weighted) occurrence times that each element appears in these $k$ selected sets are balanced, i.e., the maximum (weighted)…
We consider the (exact, minimum) $k$-cut problem: given a graph and an integer $k$, delete a minimum-weight set of edges so that the remaining graph has at least $k$ connected components. This problem is a natural generalization of the…
A family $\mathcal{F}\subset \binom{[n]}{k}$ is called an intersecting family if $F\cap F'\neq \emptyset$ for all $F,F'\in \mathcal{F}$. If $\cap \mathcal{F}\neq \emptyset$ then $\mathcal{F}$ is called a star. The diversity of an…
In this note, we give short proofs of three theorems about intersection problems. The first one is a determination of the maximum size of a nontrivial $k$-uniform, $d$-wise intersecting family for $n\ge \left(1+\frac{d}{2}\right)(k-d+2)$,…
The purpose of this short problem paper is to raise an extremal question on set systems which seems to be natural and appealing. Our question is: which set systems of a given size maximise the number of $(n+1)$-element chains in the power…
We consider the k-disjoint-clique problem. The input is an undirected graph G in which the nodes represent data items, and edges indicate a similarity between the corresponding items. The problem is to find within the graph k disjoint…
One of the major results of [N. Robertson and P. D. Seymour. Graph minors. XIII. The disjoint paths problem. J. Combin. Theory Ser. B, 63(1):65--110, 1995], also known as the weak structure theorem, revealed the local structure of graphs…
Given a finite abelian group $G$ and a subset $J\subset G$ with $0\in J$, let $D_{G}(J,N)$ be the maximum size of $A\subset G^{N}$ such that the difference set $A-A$ and $J^{N}$ have no non-trivial intersection. Recently, this extremal…
We are looking for the smallest integer k>1 providing the following characterization of the solvable radical R(G) of any finite group G: R(G) coincides with the collection of all g such that for any k elements a_1,a_2,...,a_k the subgroup…
A central theorem in combinatorics is Sperner's Theorem, which determines the maximum size of a family $\mathcal{F}\subseteq \mathcal{P}(n)$ that does not contain a $2$-chain $F_1\subsetneq F_2$. Erd\H{o}s later extended this result and…
We call a finite undirected graph minimally k-matchable if it has at least k distinct perfect matchings but deleting any edge results in a graph which has not. An odd subdivision of some graph G is any graph obtained by replacing every edge…
Given a combinatorial structure, a ``twin'' is a pair of disjoint substructures which are isomorphic (or look the same in some sense). In recent years, there have been many problems about finding large twins in various combinatorial…
Two families $\mathcal{F},\mathcal{G}$ of $k$-subsets of $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ are called non-trivial cross-intersecting if $F\cap G\neq \emptyset$ for all $F\in \mathcal{F}, G\in \mathcal{G}$ and $\cap \{F\colon F\in…