643 research outputs found
International Journal of Mathematical Combinatorics, Vol.6
The International J.Mathematical Combinatorics (ISSN 1937-1055) is a fully refereed international journal, sponsored by the MADIS of Chinese Academy of Sciences and published in USA quarterly comprising 460 pages approx. per volume, which publishes original research papers and survey articles in all aspects of Smarandache multi-spaces, Smarandache geometries, mathematical combinatorics, non-euclidean geometry and topology and their applications to other sciences
Nash equilibria, gale strings, and perfect matchings
This thesis concerns the problem 2-NASH of ļ¬nding a Nash equilibrium of a bimatrix
game, for the special class of so-called āhard-to-solveā bimatrix games. The term āhardto-solveā relates to the exponential running time of the famous and often used Lemkeā
Howson algorithm for this class of games. The games are constructed with the help of
dual cyclic polytopes, where the algorithm can be expressed combinatorially via labeled
bitstrings deļ¬ned by the āGale evenness conditionā that characterise the vertices of these
polytopes.
We deļ¬ne the combinatorial problem āAnother completely labeled Gale stringā whose
solutions deļ¬ne the Nash equilibria of any game deļ¬ned by cyclic polytopes, including
the games where the LemkeāHowson algorithm takes exponential time. We show that
āAnother completely labeled Gale stringā is solvable in polynomial time by a reduction to
the āPerfect matchingā problem in Euler graphs. We adapt the LemkeāHowson algorithm
to pivot from one perfect matching to another and show that again for a certain class
of graphs this leads to exponential behaviour. Furthermore, we prove that completely
labeled Gale strings and perfect matchings in Euler graphs come in pairs and that the
LemkeāHowson algorithm connects two strings or matchings of opposite signs.
The equivalence between Nash Equilibria of bimatrix games derived from cyclic polytopes, completely labeled Gale strings, and perfect matchings in Euler Graphs implies that
counting Nash equilibria is #P-complete. Although one Nash equilibrium can be computed in polynomial time, we have not succeeded in ļ¬nding an algorithm that computes
a Nash equilibrium of opposite sign. However, we solve this problem for certain special cases, for example planar graphs. We illustrate the difļ¬culties concerning a general
polynomial-time algorithm for this problem by means of negative results that demonstrate
why a number of approaches towards such an algorithm are unlikely to be successful
The Power of Small Coalitions under Two-Tier Majority on Regular Graphs
In this paper, we study the following problem. Consider a setting where a
proposal is offered to the vertices of a given network , and the vertices
must conduct a vote and decide whether to accept the proposal or reject it.
Each vertex has its own valuation of the proposal; we say that is
``happy'' if its valuation is positive (i.e., it expects to gain from adopting
the proposal) and ``sad'' if its valuation is negative. However, vertices do
not base their vote merely on their own valuation. Rather, a vertex is a
\emph{proponent} of the proposal if the majority of its neighbors are happy
with it and an \emph{opponent} in the opposite case. At the end of the vote,
the network collectively accepts the proposal whenever the majority of its
vertices are proponents. We study this problem for regular graphs with loops.
Specifically, we consider the class of -regular graphs
of odd order with all loops and happy vertices. We are interested
in establishing necessary and sufficient conditions for the class
to contain a labeled graph accepting the proposal, as
well as conditions to contain a graph rejecting the proposal. We also discuss
connections to the existing literature, including that on majority domination,
and investigate the properties of the obtained conditions.Comment: 28 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Discrete Applied
Mathematic
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