Superfilters, Ramsey theory, and van der Waerden's Theorem

Superfilters are generalized ultrafilters, which capture the underlying concept in Ramsey theoretic theorems such as van der Waerden's Theorem. We establish several properties of superfilters, which generalize both Ramsey's Theorem and its variant for ultrafilters on the natural numbers. We use them to confirm a conjecture of Ko\v{c}inac and Di Maio, which is a generalization of a Ramsey theoretic result of Scheepers, concerning selections from open covers. Following Bergelson and Hindman's 1989 Theorem, we present a new simultaneous generalization of the theorems of Ramsey, van der Waerden, Schur, Folkman-Rado-Sanders, Rado, and others, where the colored sets can be much smaller than the full set of natural numbers.Comment: Among other things, the results of this paper imply (using its one-dimensional version) a higher-dimensional version of the Green-Tao Theorem on arithmetic progressions in the primes. The bibliography is now update

On shifted products which are powers

In this note, we improve upon results of Bugeaud, Gyarmati, Sarkozy and Stewart concerning the size of a subset A of {1,...,N} such that the product of any two distinct elements of A plus 1 is a perfect power. We also show that the cardinality of such a set is uniformly bounded assuming the ABC-conjecture, thus improving upon a result of Dietmann, Elsholtz, Gyarmati and Simonovits

Towards an epistemic theory of probability.

The main concern of this thesis is to develop an epistemic conception of probability. In chapter one we look at Ramsey's work. In addition to his claim that the axioms of probability ace laws of consistency for partial beliefs, we focus attention on his view that the reasonableness of our probability statements does not consist merely in such coherence, but is to be assessed through the vindication of the habits which give rise to them. In chapter two we examine de Finetti's account, and compare it with Ramsey's. One significant point of divergence is de Finetti's claim that coherence is the only valid form of appraisal for probability statements. His arguments for this position depend heavily on the implementation of a Bayesian model for belief change; we argue that such an approach fails to give a satisfactory account of the relation between probabilities and objective facts. In chapter three we stake out the ground for oar own positive proposals - for an account which is non-objective in so far as it does not require the postulation of probabilistic facts, but non-subjective in the sense that probability statements are open to objective forms of appraisal. we suggest that a certain class of probability statements are best interpreted as recommendations of partial belief; these being measurable by the betting quotients that one judges to be fair. Moreover, we argue that these probability statements are open to three main forms of appraisal (each quantifiable through the use of proper scoring rules), namely: (i) Coherence (ii) Calibration (iii) Refinement. The latter two forms of appraisal are applicable both in an ex ante sense (relative to the information known by the forecaster) and an ex post one (relative to the results of the events forecast). In chapters four and five we consider certain problems which confront theories of partial belief; in particular, (1) difficulties surrounding the justification of the rule to maximise one's information, and (2) problems with the ascription of probabilities to mathematical propositions. Both of these issues seem resolvable; the first through the principle of maximising expected utility (SEU), and the second either by amending the axioms of probability, or by making use of the notion that probabilities are appraisable via scoring rules. There do remain, however, various difficulties with SEU, in particular with respect to its application in real-life situations. These are discussed, but no final conclusion reached, except that an epistemic theory such as ours is not undermined by the inapplicability of SEU in certain situations

Connected matchings in special families of graphs.

A connected matching in a graph is a set of disjoint edges such that, for any pair of these edges, there is another edge of the graph incident to both of them. This dissertation investigates two problems related to finding large connected matchings in graphs. The first problem is motivated by a famous and still open conjecture made by Hadwiger stating that every k-chromatic graph contains a minor of the complete graph Kk . If true, Hadwiger\u27s conjecture would imply that every graph G has a minor of the complete graph K n/a(C), where a(G) denotes the independence number of G. For a graph G with a(G) = 2, Thomassé first noted the connection between connected matchings and large complete graph minors: there exists an ? \u3e 0 such that every graph G with a( G) = 2 contains K ?+, as a minor if and only if there exists a positive constant c such that every graph G with a( G) = 2 contains a connected matching of size cn. In Chapter 3 we prove several structural properties of a vertexminimal counterexample to these statements, extending work by Blasiak. We also prove the existence of large connected matchings in graphs with clique size close to the Ramsey bound by proving: for any positive constants band c with c \u3c ¼, there exists a positive integer N such that, if G is a graph with n =: N vertices, 0\u27( G) = 2, and clique size at most bv(n log(n) )then G contains a connected matching of size cn. The second problem concerns computational complexity of finding the size of a maximum connected matching in a graph. This problem has many applications including, when the underlying graph is chordal bipartite, applications to the bipartite margin shop problem. For general graphs, this problem is NP-complete. Cameron has shown the problem is polynomial-time solvable for chordal graphs. Inspired by this and applications to the margin shop problem, in Chapter 4 we focus on the class of chordal bipartite graphs and one of its subclasses, the convex bipartite graphs. We show that a polynomial-time algorithm to find the size of a maximum connected matching in a chordal bipartite graph reduces to finding a polynomial-time algorithm to recognize chordal bipartite graphs that have a perfect connected matching. We also prove that, in chordal bipartite graphs, a connected matching of size k is equivalent to several other statements about the graph and its biadjacency matrix, including for example, the statement that the complement of the latter contains a k x k submatrix that is permutation equivalent to strictly upper triangular matrix

Ramsey numbers involving a triangle: theory and algorithms

Ramsey theory studies the existence of highly regular patterns in large sets of objects. Given two graphs G and H, the Ramsey number R(G, H) is defined to be the smallest integer n such that any graph F with n or more vertices must contain G, or F must contain H. Albeit beautiful, the problem of determining Ramsey numbers is considered to be very difficult. We focus our attention on efficient algorithms for determining Ram sey numbers involving a triangle: R(K3 , G). With the help of theoretical tools, the search space is reduced by using different pruning techniques and linear programming. Efficient operations are also carried out to mathematically glue together small graphs to construct larger critical graphs. Using the algorithms developed in this thesis, we compute all the Ramsey numbers R(Kz,G), where G is any connected graph of order seven. Most of the corresponding critical graphs are also constructed. We believe that the algorithms developed here will have wider applications to other Ramsey-type problems

Grafos com poucos cruzamentos e o número de cruzamentos do Kp,q em superfícies topológicas

Orientador: Orlando LeeTese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: O número de cruzamentos de um grafo G em uma superfície ? é o menor número de cruzamentos de arestas dentre todos os possíveis desenhos de G em ?. Esta tese aborda dois problemas distintos envolvendo número de cruzamentos de grafos: caracterização de grafos com número de cruzamentos igual a um e determinação do número de cruzamentos do Kp,q em superfícies topológicas. Para grafos com número de cruzamentos um, apresentamos uma completa caracterização estrutural. Também desenvolvemos um algoritmo "prático" para reconhecer estes grafos. Em relação ao número de cruzamentos do Kp,q em superfícies, mostramos que para um inteiro positivo p e uma superfície ? fixos, existe um conjunto finito D(p,?) de desenhos "bons" de grafos bipartidos completos Kp,r (possivelmente variando o r) tal que, para todo inteiro q e todo desenho D de Kp,q, existe um desenho bom D' de Kp,q obtido através de duplicação de vértices de um desenho D'' em D(p,?) tal que o número de cruzamentos de D' é menor ou igual ao número de cruzamentos de D. Em particular, para todo q suficientemente grande, existe algum desenho do Kp,q com o menor número de cruzamentos possível que é obtido a partir de algum desenho de D(p,?) através da duplicação de vértices do mesmo. Esse resultado é uma extensão de outro obtido por Cristian et. al. para esferaAbstract: The crossing number of a graph G in a surface ? is the least amount of edge crossings among all possible drawings of G in ?. This thesis deals with two problems on crossing number of graphs: characterization of graphs with crossing number one and determining the crossing number of Kp,q in topological surfaces. For graphs with crossing number one, we present a complete structural characterization. We also show a "practical" algorithm for recognition of such graphs. For the crossing number of Kp,q in surfaces, we show that for a fixed positive integer p and a fixed surface ?, there is a finite set D(p,?) of good drawings of complete bipartite graphs Kp,r (with distinct values of r) such that, for every positive integer q and every good drawing D of Kp,q, there is a good drawing D' of Kp,q obtained from a drawing D'' of D(p,?) by duplicating vertices of D'' and such that the crossing number of D' is at most the crossing number of D. In particular, for any large enough q, there exists some drawing of Kp,q with fewest crossings which can be obtained from a drawing of D(p,?) by duplicating vertices. This extends a result of Christian et. al. for the sphereDoutoradoCiência da ComputaçãoDoutor em Ciência da Computação2014/14375-9FAPES

Turán-Ramsey theorems and simple asymptotically extremal structures

This paper is a continuation of [10], where P. Erdos, A. Hajnal, V. T. Sos. and E. Szemeredi investigated the following problem: Assume that a so called forbidden graph L and a function f(n) = o(n) are fixed. What is the maximum number of edges a graph G(n) on n vertices can have without containing L as a subgraph, and also without having more than f(n) independent vertices? This problem is motivated by the classical Turan and Ramsey theorems, and also by some applications of the Turin theorem to geometry, analysis (in particular, potential theory) [27 29], [11-13]. In this paper we are primarily interested in the following problem. Let (G(n)) be a graph sequence where G(n) has n vertices and the edges of G(n) are coloured by the colours chi1,...,chi(r), so that the subgraph of colour chi(nu) contains no complete subgraph K(pnu), (nu = 1,...,r). Further, assume that the size of any independent set in G(n) is o(n) (as n --> infinity). What is the maximum number of edges in G(n) under these conditions? One of the main results of this paper is the description of a procedure yielding relatively simple sequences of asymptotically extremal graphs for the problem. In a continuation of this paper we shall investigate the problem where instead of alpha(G(n)) = o(n) we assume the stronger condition that the maximum size of a K(p)-free induced subgraph of G(n) is o(n)