Minimal blocks of binary even-weight vectors

AbstractOdd circuits are minimal 1-blocks over GF(2) and the odd circuit of size 2t+1 can be represented by the vectors of Hamming weight 2t in a (2t+1)-dimensional vector space over GF(2). This is the tip of an iceberg. Let f(2t,k,2) be the maximum number of binary k-dimensional column vectors such that for all s, 1⩽s⩽t, no 2s columns sum to the zero vector. If k=2, k=3, k=4, or k⩾5 and 2t is sufficiently large (for example, 2t⩾2k−k+1 suffices), then the set of vectors of weight 2t in a (f(2t,k,2)+2t−1)-dimensional vector space over GF(2) is a minimal k-block over GF(2)

Tractable Partially Ordered Sets Derived from Root Systems and Biased Graphs

We study new posets Q obtained by removing from a geometric lattice L ofa biased graph certain flats indexed by a simplicial complex . (One example of L is the lattice of flats of thevector matroid of a root system B n .) We study the structureand compute the characteristic polynomial of Q . With certainchoices of L and , including ones for which Q is alattice interpolating between those of B n and D n , we observe curious relationships among the roots of thecharacteristic polynomials of Q, L, and .Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43341/1/11083_2004_Article_163995.pd

An extensive English language bibliography on graph theory and its applications, supplement 1

Graph theory and its applications - bibliography, supplement

Templates for Representable Matroids

The matroid structure theory of Geelen, Gerards, and Whittle has led to a hypothesis that a highly connected member of a minor-closed class of matroids representable over a finite field is a mild modification (known as a perturbation) of a frame matroid, the dual of a frame matroid, or a matroid representable over a proper subfield. They introduced the notion of a template to describe these perturbations in more detail. In this dissertation, we determine these templates for various classes and use them to prove results about representability, extremal functions, and excluded minors. Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction to matroids and matroid structure theory. Chapters 2 and 3 analyze this hypothesis of Geelen, Gerards, and Whittle and propose some refined hypotheses. In Chapter 3, we define frame templates and discuss various notions of template equivalence. Chapter 4 gives some details on how templates relate to each other. We define a preorder on the set of frame templates over a finite field, and we determine the minimal nontrivial templates with respect to this preorder. We also study in significant depth a specific type of template that is pertinent to many applications. Chapters 5 and 6 apply the results of Chapters 3 and 4 to several subclasses of the binary matroids and the quaternary matroids---those matroids representable over the fields of two and four elements, respectively. Two of the classes we study in Chapter 5 are the even-cycle matroids and the even-cut matroids. Each of these classes has hundreds of excluded minors. We show that, for highly connected matroids, two or three excluded minors suffice. We also show that Seymour\u27s 1-Flowing Conjecture holds for sufficiently highly connected matroids. In Chapter 6, we completely characterize the highly connected members of the class of golden-mean matroids and several other closely related classes of quaternary matroids. This leads to a determination of the extremal functions for these classes, verifying a conjecture of Archer for matroids of sufficiently large rank

Linked Tree-Decompositions of Infinite Represented Matroids

It is natural to try to extend the results of Robertson and Seymour's Graph Minors Project to other objects. As linked tree-decompositions (LTDs) of graphs played a key role in the Graph Minors Project, establishing the existence of ltds of other objects is a useful step towards such extensions. There has been progress in this direction for both infinite graphs and matroids. Kris and Thomas proved that infinite graphs of finite tree-width have LTDs. More recently, Geelen, Gerards and Whittle proved that matroids have linked branch-decompositions, which are similar to LTDs. These results suggest that infinite matroids of finite treewidth should have LTDs. We answer this conjecture affirmatively for the representable case. Specifically, an independence space is an infinite matroid, and a point configuration (hereafter configuration) is a represented independence space. It is shown that every configuration having tree-width has an LTD k E w (kappa element of omega) of width at most 2k. Configuration analogues for bridges of X (also called connected components modulo X) and chordality in graphs are introduced to prove this result. A correspondence is established between chordal configurations only containing subspaces of dimension at most k E w (kappa element of omega) and configuration tree-decompositions having width at most k. This correspondence is used to characterise finite-width LTDs of configurations by their local structure, enabling the proof of the existence result. The theory developed is also used to show compactness of configuration tree-width: a configuration has tree-width at most k E w (kappa element of omega) if and only if each of its finite subconfigurations has tree-width at most k E w (kappa element of omega). The existence of LTDs for configurations having finite tree-width opens the possibility of well-quasi-ordering (or even better-quasi-ordering) by minors those independence spaces representable over a fixed finite field and having bounded tree-width

Algebraic Statistics

Algebraic Statistics is concerned with the interplay of techniques from commutative algebra, combinatorics, (real) algebraic geometry, and related fields with problems arising in statistics and data science. This workshop was the first at Oberwolfach dedicated to this emerging subject area. The participants highlighted recent achievements in this field, explored exciting new applications, and mapped out future directions for research

The Maximum Size of Combinatorial Geometries Excluding Wheels and Whirls as Minors

We show that the maximum size of a geometry of rank n excluding the (q + 2)-point line, the 3-wheel W_3, and the 3-whirl W^3 as minor is (n - 1)q + 1, and geometries of maximum size are parallel connections of (q + 1)-point lines. We show that the maximum size of a geometry of rank n excluding the 5-point line, the 4-wheel W_4, and the 4-whirl W^4 as minors is 6n - 5, for n ≥ 3. Examples of geometries having rank n and size 6n - 5 include parallel connections of the geometries V_19 and PG(2,3)