6,578 research outputs found
Positional Games
Positional games are a branch of combinatorics, researching a variety of
two-player games, ranging from popular recreational games such as Tic-Tac-Toe
and Hex, to purely abstract games played on graphs and hypergraphs. It is
closely connected to many other combinatorial disciplines such as Ramsey
theory, extremal graph and set theory, probabilistic combinatorics, and to
computer science. We survey the basic notions of the field, its approaches and
tools, as well as numerous recent advances, standing open problems and
promising research directions.Comment: Submitted to Proceedings of the ICM 201
Short proofs of some extremal results
We prove several results from different areas of extremal combinatorics,
giving complete or partial solutions to a number of open problems. These
results, coming from areas such as extremal graph theory, Ramsey theory and
additive combinatorics, have been collected together because in each case the
relevant proofs are quite short.Comment: 19 page
Strong Ramsey Games in Unbounded Time
For two graphs and the strong Ramsey game on the
board and with target is played as follows. Two players alternately
claim edges of . The first player to build a copy of wins. If none of
the players win, the game is declared a draw. A notorious open question of Beck
asks whether the first player has a winning strategy in
in bounded time as . Surprisingly, in a recent paper Hefetz
et al. constructed a -uniform hypergraph for which they proved
that the first player does not have a winning strategy in
in bounded time. They naturally ask
whether the same result holds for graphs. In this paper we make further
progress in decreasing the rank.
In our first result, we construct a graph (in fact )
and prove that the first player does not have a winning strategy in
in bounded time. As an application of this
result we deduce our second result in which we construct a -uniform
hypergraph and prove that the first player does not have a winning
strategy in in bounded time. This improves the
result in the paper above.
An equivalent formulation of our first result is that the game
is a draw. Another reason for interest
on the board is a folklore result that the disjoint
union of two finite positional games both of which are first player wins is
also a first player win. An amusing corollary of our first result is that at
least one of the following two natural statements is false: (1) for every graph
, is a first player win; (2) for every graph
if is a first player win, then
is also a first player win.Comment: 18 pages, 46 figures; changes: fully reworked presentatio
Strong Ramsey Games in Unbounded Time
For two graphs and the strong Ramsey game on the
board and with target is played as follows. Two players alternately
claim edges of . The first player to build a copy of wins. If none of
the players win, the game is declared a draw. A notorious open question of Beck
asks whether the first player has a winning strategy in
in bounded time as . Surprisingly, in a recent paper Hefetz
et al. constructed a -uniform hypergraph for which they proved
that the first player does not have a winning strategy in
in bounded time. They naturally ask
whether the same result holds for graphs. In this paper we make further
progress in decreasing the rank.
In our first result, we construct a graph (in fact )
and prove that the first player does not have a winning strategy in
in bounded time. As an application of this
result we deduce our second result in which we construct a -uniform
hypergraph and prove that the first player does not have a winning
strategy in in bounded time. This improves the
result in the paper above.
An equivalent formulation of our first result is that the game
is a draw. Another reason for interest
on the board is a folklore result that the disjoint
union of two finite positional games both of which are first player wins is
also a first player win. An amusing corollary of our first result is that at
least one of the following two natural statements is false: (1) for every graph
, is a first player win; (2) for every graph
if is a first player win, then
is also a first player win.Comment: 17 pages, 48 figures; improved presentation, particularly in section
On the existence of highly organized communities in networks of locally interacting agents
In this paper we investigate phenomena of spontaneous emergence or purposeful
formation of highly organized structures in networks of related agents. We show
that the formation of large organized structures requires exponentially large,
in the size of the structures, networks. Our approach is based on Kolmogorov,
or descriptional, complexity of networks viewed as finite size strings. We
apply this approach to the study of the emergence or formation of simple
organized, hierarchical, structures based on Sierpinski Graphs and we prove a
Ramsey type theorem that bounds the number of vertices in Kolmogorov random
graphs that contain Sierpinski Graphs as subgraphs. Moreover, we show that
Sierpinski Graphs encompass close-knit relationships among their vertices that
facilitate fast spread and learning of information when agents in their
vertices are engaged in pairwise interactions modelled as two person games.
Finally, we generalize our findings for any organized structure with succinct
representations. Our work can be deployed, in particular, to study problems
related to the security of networks by identifying conditions which enable or
forbid the formation of sufficiently large insider subnetworks with malicious
common goal to overtake the network or cause disruption of its operation
On-line Ramsey numbers of paths and cycles
Consider a game played on the edge set of the infinite clique by two players,
Builder and Painter. In each round, Builder chooses an edge and Painter colours
it red or blue. Builder wins by creating either a red copy of or a blue
copy of for some fixed graphs and . The minimum number of rounds
within which Builder can win, assuming both players play perfectly, is the
on-line Ramsey number . In this paper, we consider the case
where is a path . We prove that for all , and determine
) up to an additive constant for all .
We also prove some general lower bounds for on-line Ramsey numbers of the form
.Comment: Preprin
Erdos-Szekeres-type theorems for monotone paths and convex bodies
For any sequence of positive integers j_1 < j_2 < ... < j_n, the k-tuples
(j_i,j_{i + 1},...,j_{i + k-1}), i=1, 2,..., n - k+1, are said to form a
monotone path of length n. Given any integers n\ge k\ge 2 and q\ge 2, what is
the smallest integer N with the property that no matter how we color all
k-element subsets of [N]=\{1,2,..., N\} with q colors, we can always find a
monochromatic monotone path of length n? Denoting this minimum by N_k(q,n), it
follows from the seminal 1935 paper of Erd\H os and Szekeres that
N_2(q,n)=(n-1)^q+1 and N_3(2,n) = {2n -4\choose n-2} + 1. Determining the other
values of these functions appears to be a difficult task. Here we show that
2^{(n/q)^{q-1}} \leq N_3(q,n) \leq 2^{n^{q-1}\log n}, for q \geq 2 and n \geq
q+2. Using a stepping-up approach that goes back to Erdos and Hajnal, we prove
analogous bounds on N_k(q,n) for larger values of k, which are towers of height
k-1 in n^{q-1}. As a geometric application, we prove the following extension of
the Happy Ending Theorem. Every family of at least M(n)=2^{n^2 \log n} plane
convex bodies in general position, any pair of which share at most two boundary
points, has n members in convex position, that is, it has n members such that
each of them contributes a point to the boundary of the convex hull of their
union.Comment: 32 page
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