Let k be a positive integer, k ≥ 2. In this paper we study bipartite graphs G such that, for n sufficiently large, each two-coloring of the edges of the complete graph Kn gives a monochromatic copy of G, with some k of its vertices having the maximum degree of these k vertices minus the minimum degree of these k vertices (in the colored Kn) at most k − 2.

A connection is made between the theory of ergodicity and the expected complexity of string searching. In particular, a substring search algorithm is introduced which, when applied to searching in text that has been produced by an appropriate stationary ergodic source, has an expected running time of O((N/m + m)logm), for a text string of length N and search string of length m. Similar expected complexity results have been obtained before, but the analysis is performed in a significantly more general framework, which models with greater accuracy the statistics of many types of strings, including natural language. The analysis also sheds light on the performance of the Boyer-Moore algorithm and the Sunday algorithm when applied to natural language.

A theorem of Makarov states that the harmonic measure of a connected subset of ℝ2 is supported on a set of Hausdorff dimension one. This paper gives an analogue of this theorem for discrete harmonic measure, i.e., the hitting measure of simple random walk. It is proved that for any 1/2 < α < 1, β < α − 1/2, there is a constant k such that for any connected subset A ⊂ ℤ2 of radius n,

where HA denotes discrete harmonic measure.

A rule for shuffling an infinite deck of cards is considered where at each time step the first and jth card are interchanged with probability pj. Conditions are given under which this shuffling scheme, considered as a Markov chain on the space of permutations of integers, is recurrent or transient.

We derive bounds for eigenvalues of the Laplacian of graphs using discrete versions of the Sobolev inequalities and heat kernel estimates.

We show that the total chromatic number of a simple k-chromatic graph exceeds the chromatic index by at most 18k ⅓ log ½ 3k.

For every n consider a subset Hn of the patterns of length n over a fixed finite alphabet. The limit distribution of the waiting time until each element of Hn appears in an infinite sequence of independent, uniformly distributed random letters was determined in an earlier paper. This time we prove that these waiting times are getting independent as n → ∞. Our result is used for applying the converse part of the Borel–Cantelli lemma to problems connected with such waiting times, yielding thus improvements on some known theorems.

We consider a simple randomised algorithm that seeks a weak 2-colouring of a hypergraph H; that is, it tries to 2-colour the points of H so that no edge is monochromatic. If H has a particular well-behaved form of such a colouring, then the method is successful within expected number of iterations O(n3) when H has n points. In particular, when applied to a graph G with n nodes and chromatic number 3, the method yields a 2-colouring of the vertices such that no triangle is monochromatic in expected time O(n4).

An infinite graph is called bounded if for every labelling of its vertices with natural numbers there exists a sequence of natural numbers which eventually exceeds the labelling along any ray in the graph. Thomassen has conjectured that a countable graph is bounded if and only if its edges can be oriented, possibly both ways, so that every vertex has finite out-degree and every ray has a forward oriented tail. We present a counterexample to this conjecture.

We show that r-regular, s-uniform hypergraphs contain a perfect matching with high probability (whp), provided The Proof is based on the application of a technique of Robinson and Wormald [7, 8]. The space of hypergraphs is partitioned into subsets according to the number of small cycles in the hypergraph. The difference in the expected number of perfect matchings between these subsets explains most of the variance of the number of perfect matchings in the space of hypergraphs, and is sufficient to prove existence (whp), using the Chebychev Inequality.

The main result of this paper is that for every 2 ≤ r < s, and n sufficiently large, there exist graphs of order n, not containing a complete graph on s vertices, in which every relatively not too small subset of vertices spans a complete graph on r vertices. Our results improve on previous results of Bollobás and Hind.

It is proved that any plane graph may be represented by a triangle contact system, that is a collection of triangular disks which are disjoint except at contact points, each contact point being a node of exactly one triangle. Representations using contacts of T-or Y-shaped objects follow. Moreover, there is a one-to-one mapping between all the triangular contact representations of a maximal plane graph and all its partitions into three Schnyder trees.

A graph is vertex-transitive (edge-transitive) if its automorphism group acts transitively on the vertices (edges, resp.). The expansion rate of a subset S of the vertex set is the quotient e(S):= |∂(S)|/|S|, where ∂(S) denotes the set of vertices not in S but adjacent to some vertex in S. Improving and extending previous results of Aldous and Babai, we give very simple proofs of the following results. Let X be a (finite or infinite) vertex-transitive graph and let S be a finite subset of the vertices. If X is finite, we also assume |S| ≤|V(X)/2. Let d be the diameter of S in the metric induced by X. Then e(S) ≥1/(d + 1); and e(S) ≥ 2/(d +2) if X is finite and d is less than the diameter of X. If X is edge-transitive then |δ(S)|/|S| ≥ r/(2d), where ∂(S) denotes the set of edges joining S to its complement and r is the harmonic mean of the minimum and maximum degrees of X. – Diverse applications of the results are mentioned.

The main result of this paper has the following consequence. Let G be an abelian group of order n. Let {xi: 1 ≤ 2n − 1} be a family of elements of G and let {wi: 1 ≤ i ≤ n − 1} be a family of integers prime relative to n. Then there is a permutation & of [1,2n − 1] such that

Applying this result with wi = 1 for all i, one obtains the Erdős–Ginzburg–Ziv Theorem.

Thinking of a deterministic function s: ℤ → ℕ as ‘scenery’ on the integers, a simple random walk on ℤ generates a random record of scenery ‘observed’ along the walk. We address this question: If t:ℤ → ℕ is another scenery on the integers and we are handed a random scenery record obtained from either s or t, under what circumstances can the source be distinguished? We allow ourselves to use information about s and t together with information contained in the scenery record. It has been conjectured that it is sufficient for t to be neither a translate of s nor a translate of the reflection of s. We show that this condition is sufficient to ensure distinguishability if s−1(δ) is finite and non-empty for some δ ∈ℕ.

Let G be a graph and P(G, t) be the chromatic polynomial of G. It is known that P(G, t) has no zeros in the intervals (−∞, 0) and (0, 1). We shall show that P(G, t) has no zeros in (1, 32/27]. In addition, we shall construct graphs whose chromatic polynomials have zeros arbitrarily close to 32/27.

In this paper, we present a techique for examining all trees of a given order. Our approach is based on the Beyer and Hedetniemi algorithm for generating all rooted trees of a given order and on the Wright, Richmond, Odlyzko and McKay algorithm for generating all free trees of a given order. In the introduction we describe these algorithms. We also give a precise evaluation of the average number of moves it takes to generate a rooted tree, which improves the upper bound given by Beyer and Hedetniemi. In the second section we present a new method of examining all trees which uses these generating algorithms. The last section contains two applications of the method introduced. The main result of the paper is that the average number of steps required by the proposed algorithm to examine a rooted tree is bounded by a constant independent of the order of a tree.