Degreewidth: a New Parameter for Solving Problems on Tournaments

In the paper, we define a new parameter for tournaments called degreewidth which can be seen as a measure of how far is the tournament from being acyclic. The degreewidth of a tournament $T$ denoted by $\Delta(T)$ is the minimum value $k$ for which we can find an ordering $\langle v_1, \dots, v_n \rangle$ of the vertices of $T$ such that every vertex is incident to at most $k$ backward arcs (\textit{i.e.} an arc $(v_i,v_j)$ such that $j<i$). Thus, a tournament is acyclic if and only if its degreewidth is zero. Additionally, the class of sparse tournaments defined by Bessy et al. [ESA 2017] is exactly the class of tournaments with degreewidth one. We first study computational complexity of finding degreewidth. Namely, we show it is NP-hard and complement this result with a $3$-approximation algorithm. We also provide a cubic algorithm to decide if a tournament is sparse. Finally, we study classical graph problems \textsc{Dominating Set} and \textsc{Feedback Vertex Set} parameterized by degreewidth. We show the former is fixed parameter tractable whereas the latter is NP-hard on sparse tournaments. Additionally, we study \textsc{Feedback Arc Set} on sparse tournaments

On The Relational Width of First-Order Expansions of Finitely Bounded Homogeneous Binary Cores with Bounded Strict Width

The relational width of a finite structure, if bounded, is always (1,1) or (2,3). In this paper we study the relational width of first-order expansions of finitely bounded homogeneous binary cores where binary cores are structures with equality and some anti-reflexive binary relations such that for any two different elements a, b in the domain there is exactly one binary relation R with (a, b) in R. Our main result is that first-order expansions of liberal finitely bounded homogeneous binary cores with bounded strict width have relational width (2, MaxBound) where MaxBound is the size of the largest forbidden substructure, but is not less than 3, and liberal stands for structures that do not forbid certain finite structures of small size. This result is built on a new approach and concerns a broad class of structures including reducts of homogeneous digraphs for which the CSP complexity classification has not yet been obtained.Comment: A long version of an extended abstract that appeared in LICS 202

The "No Justice in the Universe" phenomenon: why honesty of effort may not be rewarded in tournaments

In 2000 Allen Schwenk, using a well-known mathematical model of matchplay tournaments in which the probability of one player beating another in a single match is fixed for each pair of players, showed that the classical single-elimination, seeded format can be "unfair" in the sense that situations can arise where an indisputibly better (and thus higher seeded) player may have a smaller probability of winning the tournament than a worse one. This in turn implies that, if the players are able to influence their seeding in some preliminary competition, situations can arise where it is in a player's interest to behave "dishonestly", by deliberately trying to lose a match. This motivated us to ask whether it is possible for a tournament to be both honest, meaning that it is impossible for a situation to arise where a rational player throws a match, and "symmetric" - meaning basically that the rules treat everyone the same - yet unfair, in the sense that an objectively better player has a smaller probability of winning than a worse one. After rigorously defining our terms, our main result is that such tournaments exist and we construct explicit examples for any number n >= 3 of players. For n=3, we show (Theorem 3.6) that the collection of win-probability vectors for such tournaments form a 5-vertex convex polygon in R^3, minus some boundary points. We conjecture a similar result for any n >= 4 and prove some partial results towards it.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figure