Related papers: A note on finding large transversals efficiently

The logarithm of the maximum number of transversals over all latin squares of order $n$ is greater than $\frac{n}{6}(\ln n+ O(1))$.

An $n \times n$ partial Latin square $P$ is called $\alpha$-dense if each row and column has at most $\alpha n$ non-empty cells and each symbol occurs at most $\alpha n$ times in $P$. An $n \times n$ array $A$ where each cell contains a…

Squares (fragments of the form $xx$, for some string $x$) are arguably the most natural type of repetition in strings. The basic algorithmic question concerning squares is to check if a given string of length $n$ is square-free, that is,…

In a latin square of order $n$, a near transversal is a collection of $n-1$ cells which intersects each row, column, and symbol class at most once. A longstanding conjecture of Brualdi, Ryser, and Stein asserts that every latin square…

Rabern recently proved that any graph with omega >= (3/4)(Delta+1) contains a stable set meeting all maximum cliques. We strengthen this result, proving that such a stable set exists for any graph with omega > (2/3)(Delta+1). This is tight,…

This paper is concerned with the problem of finding $n$ distinct squares such that, on excluding any one of them, the sum of the remaining $n-1$ squares is a square. While parametric solutions are known when $n=3$ and $n=4$, when $n > 4$,…

A $k$-plex in a latin square of order $n$ is a selection of $kn$ entries that includes $k$ representatives from each row and column and $k$ occurrences of each symbol. A $1$-plex is also known as a transversal. It is well known that if $n$…

A $k$-plane of a $d$-dimensional array is a subarray formed by fixing $d-k$ coordinates and allowing the remaining $k$ coordinates to vary freely. A Latin hypercube of dimension $d$ and order $n$ is an $n\times n\times\cdots\times n$ array…

The transversal rank of a hypergraph is the maximum size of its minimal hitting sets. Deciding, for an $n$-vertex, $m$-edge hypergraph and an integer $k$, whether the transversal rank is at least $k$ takes time $O(m^{k+1} n)$ with an…

A linear chord diagram of size $n$ is a partition of the set $\{1,2,\cdots,2n\}$ into sets of size two, called chords. From a table showing the number of linear chord diagrams of degree $n$ such that every chord has length at least $k$, we…

A binary triangle of size $n$ is a triangle of zeroes and ones, with $n$ rows, built with the same local rule as the standard Pascal triangle modulo $2$. A binary triangle is said to be balanced if the absolute difference between the…

In 1989, Rota conjectured that, given any $n$ bases $B_1,\dots,B_n$ of a vector space of dimension $n$, or more generally a matroid of rank $n$, it is possible to rearrange these into $n$ disjoint transversal bases. Here, a transversal…

A visibility representation is a classical drawing style of planar graphs. It displays the vertices of a graph as horizontal vertex-segments, and each edge is represented by a vertical edge-segment touching the segments of its end vertices;…

A chessboard has the property that every row and every column has as many white squares as black squares. In this mostly methodological note, we address the problem of counting such rectangular arrays with a fixed (numeric) number of rows,…

Answering a recent question of Patchell and Spiro, we show that when a $d$-dimensional cube of side length $n$ is filled with letters, the word $\mathsf{CAT}$ can appear contiguously at most $(3^{d-1}/2)n^d$ times (allowing diagonals); we…

Let G be a graph with maximum degree \Delta whose vertex set is partitioned into parts V(G) = V_1 \cup ... \cup V_r. A transversal is a subset of V(G) containing exactly one vertex from each part V_i. If it is also an independent set, then…

A $k \times n$ partial Latin rectangle is \textit{$C$-sparse} if the number of nonempty entries in each row and column is at most $C$ and each symbol is used at most $C$ times. We prove that the probability a uniformly random $k \times n$…

An independent transversal in a multipartite graph is an independent set that intersects each part in exactly one vertex. We show that for every even integer $r\ge 2$, there exist $c_r>0$ and $n_0$ such that every $r$-partite graph with…

A graph with n vertices is 1-planar if it can be drawn in the plane such that each edge is crossed at most once, and is optimal if it has the maximum of 4n-8 edges. We show that optimal 1-planar graphs can be recognized in linear time. Our…

A popular way to define or characterize graph classes is via forbidden subgraphs or forbidden minors. These characterizations play a key role in graph theory, but they rarely lead to efficient algorithms to recognize these classes. In…