We show that the expected number of maximal empty axis-parallel boxes amidst n random points in the unit hypercube [0,1]d in $\mathbb{R}^d$ is (1 ± o(1)) $\frac{(2d-2)!}{(d-1)!}$n lnd−1n, if d is fixed. This estimate is relevant to analysis of the performance of exact algorithms for computing the largest empty axis-parallel box amidst n given points in an axis-parallel box R, especially the algorithms that proceed by examining all maximal empty boxes. Our method for bounding the expected number of maximal empty boxes also shows that the expected number of maximal empty orthants determined by n random points in $\mathbb{R}^d$ is (1 ± o(1)) lnd−1n, if d is fixed. This estimate is related to the expected number of maximal (or minimal) points amidst random points, and has application to algorithms for coloured orthogonal range counting.

One can define the independence polynomial of a graph G as follows. Let ik(G) denote the number of independent sets of size k of G, where i0(G)=1. Then the independence polynomial of G is I(G,x)=∑k=0n(−1)kik(G)xk. In this paper we give a new proof of the fact that the root of I(G,x) having the smallest modulus is unique and is real.

A permutation σ describing the relative orders of the first n iterates of a point x under a self-map f of the interval I=[0,1] is called an order pattern. For fixed f and n, measuring the points x ∈ I (according to Lebesgue measure) that generate the order pattern σ gives a probability distribution μn(f) on the set of length n permutations. We study the distributions that arise this way for various classes of functions f.

Our main results treat the class of measure-preserving functions. We obtain an exact description of the set of realizable distributions in this case: for each n this set is a union of open faces of the polytope of flows on a certain digraph, and a simple combinatorial criterion determines which faces are included. We also show that for general f, apart from an obvious compatibility condition, there is no restriction on the sequence {μn(f)}n=1,2,. . ..

In addition, we give a necessary condition for f to have finite exclusion type, that is, for there to be finitely many order patterns that generate all order patterns not realized by f. Using entropy we show that if f is piecewise continuous, piecewise monotone, and either ergodic or with points of arbitrarily high period, then f cannot have finite exclusion type. This generalizes results of S. Elizalde.

The tensor product (G1,G2) of a graph G1 and a pointed graph G2 (containing one distinguished edge) is obtained by identifying each edge of G1 with the distinguished edge of a separate copy of G2, and then removing the identified edges. A formula to compute the Tutte polynomial of a tensor product of graphs was originally given by Brylawski. This formula was recently generalized to coloured graphs and the generalized Tutte polynomial introduced by Bollobás and Riordan. In this paper we generalize the coloured tensor product formula to relative Tutte polynomials of relative graphs, containing zero edges to which the usual deletion/contraction rules do not apply. As we have shown in a recent paper, relative Tutte polynomials may be used to compute the Jones polynomial of a virtual knot.

This paper is the first application of the compensation approach (a well-established theory in probability theory) to counting problems. We discuss how this method can be applied to a general class of walks in the quarter plane +2 with a step set that is a subset of

\[ \{(-1,1),(-1,0),(-1,-1),(0,-1),(1,-1)\}\]

Let Δ ≥ 2 be a fixed integer. We show that the random graph ${\mathcal{G}_{n,p}}$ with $p\gg (\log n/n)^{1/\Delta}$ is robust with respect to the containment of almost spanning bipartite graphs H with maximum degree Δ and sublinear bandwidth in the following sense: asymptotically almost surely, if an adversary deletes arbitrary edges from ${\mathcal{G}_{n,p}}$ in such a way that each vertex loses less than half of its neighbours, then the resulting graph still contains a copy of all such H.

Given a (multi)digraph H, a digraph D is H-linked if every injective function ι:V(H) → V(D) can be extended to an H-subdivision. In this paper, we give sharp degree conditions that ensure a sufficiently large digraph D is H-linked for arbitrary H. The notion of an H-linked digraph extends the classes of m-linked, m-ordered and strongly m-connected digraphs.

First, we give sharp minimum semi-degree conditions for H-linkedness, extending results of Kühn and Osthus on m-linked and m-ordered digraphs. It is known that the minimum degree threshold for an undirected graph to be H-linked depends on a partition of the (undirected) graph H into three parts. Here, we show that the corresponding semi-degree threshold for H-linked digraphs depends on a partition of H into as many as nine parts.

We also determine sharp Ore–Woodall-type degree-sum conditions ensuring that a digraph D is H-linked for general H. As a corollary, we obtain (previously undetermined) sharp degree-sum conditions for m-linked and m-ordered digraphs.

For k-graphs F0 and H, an F0-packing of H is a family $\mathscr{F}$ of pairwise edge-disjoint copies of F0 in H. Let νF0(H) denote the maximum size |$\mathscr{F}$| of an F0-packing of H. Already in the case of graphs, computing νF0(H) is NP-hard for most fixed F0 (Dor and Tarsi [6]).

In this paper, we consider the case when F0 is a fixed linear k-graph. We establish an algorithm which, for ζ > 0 and a given k-graph H, constructs in time polynomial in |V(H)| an F0-packing of H of size at least νF0(H) − ζ |V(H)|k. Our result extends one of Haxell and Rödl, who established the analogous algorithm for graphs.

We study Maker/Breaker games on the edges of sparse graphs. Maker and Breaker take turns at claiming previously unclaimed edges of a given graph H. Maker aims to occupy a given target graph G and Breaker tries to prevent Maker from achieving his goal. We show that for every d there is a constant c = c(d) with the property that for every graph G on n vertices of maximum degree d there is a graph H on at most cn edges such that Maker has a strategy to occupy a copy of G in the game on H.

This is a result about a game-theoretic variant of the size Ramsey number. For a given graph G, $\hat{r}'(G)$ is defined as the smallest number M for which there exists a graph H with M edges such that Maker has a strategy to occupy a copy of G in the game on H. In this language, our result yields that for every connected graph G of constant maximum degree, $\hat{r}'(G) = \Theta(n)$.

Moreover, we can also use our method to settle the corresponding extremal number for universal graphs: for a constant d and for the class ${\cal G}_{n}$ of n-vertex graphs of maximum degree d, $s({\cal G}_{n})$ denotes the minimum number such that there exists a graph H with M edges where, for everyG ∈ ${\cal G}_{n}$, Maker has a strategy to build a copy of G in the game on H. We obtain that $s({\cal G}_{n}) = \Theta(n^{2 - \frac{2}{d}})$.

In a paper published in this journal, Alon, Kohayakawa, Mauduit, Moreira and Rödl proved that the minimal possible value of the normality measure of an N-element binary sequence satisfies

\begin{equation*} \biggl( \frac{1}{2} + o(1) \biggr) \log_2 N \leq \min_{E_N \in \{0,1\}^N} \mathcal{N}(E_N) \leq 3 N^{1/3} (\log N)^{2/3} \end{equation*}

We prove that there is a constant c such that, for each positive integer k, every (2k + 1) × (2k + 1) array A on the symbols (1,. . .,2k+1) with at most c(2k+1) symbols in every cell, and each symbol repeated at most c(2k+1) times in every row and column is avoidable; that is, there is a (2k+1) × (2k+1) Latin square S on the symbols 1,. . .,2k+1 such that, for each i,j ∈ {1,. . .,2k+1}, the symbol in position (i,j) of S does not appear in the corresponding cell in A. This settles the last open case of a conjecture by Häggkvist. Using this result, we also show that there is a constant ρ, such that, for any positive integer n, if each cell in an n × n array B is assigned a set of m ≤ ρ n symbols, where each set is chosen independently and uniformly at random from {1,. . .,n}, then the probability that B is avoidable tends to 1 as n → ∞.

The study of extremal problems related to independent sets in hypergraphs is a problem that has generated much interest. There are a variety of types of independent sets in hypergraphs depending on the number of vertices from an independent set allowed in an edge. We say that a subset of vertices is j-independent if its intersection with any edge has size strictly less than j. The Kruskal–Katona theorem implies that in an r-uniform hypergraph with a fixed size and order, the hypergraph with the most r-independent sets is the lexicographic hypergraph. In this paper, we use a hypergraph regularity lemma, along with a technique developed by Loh, Pikhurko and Sudakov, to give an asymptotically best possible upper bound on the number of j-independent sets in an r-uniform hypergraph.

A classical result of Robertson and Seymour states that the set of graphs containing a fixed planar graph H as a minor has the so-called Erdős–Pósa property; namely, there exists a function f depending only on H such that, for every graph G and every positive integer k, the graph G has k vertex-disjoint subgraphs each containing H as a minor, or there exists a subset X of vertices of G with |X| ≤ f(k) such that G − X has no H-minor (see Robertson and Seymour, J. Combin. Theory Ser. B41 (1986) 92–114). While the best function f currently known is exponential in k, a O(k log k) bound is known in the special case where H is a forest. This is a consequence of a theorem of Bienstock, Robertson, Seymour and Thomas on the pathwidth of graphs with an excluded forest-minor. In this paper we show that the function f can be taken to be linear when H is a forest. This is best possible in the sense that no linear bound is possible if H has a cycle.

In the paper we develop an approach to asymptotic normality through factorial cumulants. Factorial cumulants arise in the same manner from factorial moments as do (ordinary) cumulants from (ordinary) moments. Another tool we exploit is a new identity for ‘moments’ of partitions of numbers. The general limiting result is then used to (re-)derive asymptotic normality for several models including classical discrete distributions, occupancy problems in some generalized allocation schemes and two models related to negative multinomial distribution.

In this paper, we prove several new Turán density results for 3-graphs with independent neighbourhoods. We show:

\begin{align*} \pi (K_4^-, C_5, F_{3,2})=12/49, \pi (K_4^-, F_{3,2})=5/18 \textrm {and} \pi (J_4, F_{3,2})=\pi (J_5, F_{3,2})=3/8, \end{align*}

$\binom{|A|}{2}$

\begin{align*} \pi (F_{3,2}, \textrm { induced }K_4^-)=3/8 \textrm {and} \pi (K_5, 5\textrm {-set spanning exactly 8 edges})=3/4. \end{align*}

\begin{align*} \pi (K_4, 4\textrm {-set spanning exactly 1 edge})=5/9. \end{align*}

For a positive integer r ≥ 2, a Kr-factor of a graph is a collection vertex-disjoint copies of Kr which covers all the vertices of the given graph. The celebrated theorem of Hajnal and Szemerédi asserts that every graph on n vertices with minimum degree at least $(1-\frac{1}{r})n contains a Kr-factor. In this note, we propose investigating the relation between minimum degree and existence of perfect Kr-packing for edge-weighted graphs. The main question we study is the following. Suppose that a positive integer r ≥ 2 and a real t ∈ [0, 1] is given. What is the minimum weighted degree of Kn that guarantees the existence of a Kr-factor such that every factor has total edge weight at least $$t\binom{r}{2}$?$ We provide some lower and upper bounds and make a conjecture on the asymptotics of the threshold as n goes to infinity.

A minimum feedback arc set of a directed graph G is a smallest set of arcs whose removal makes G acyclic. Its cardinality is denoted by β(G). We show that a simple Eulerian digraph with n vertices and m arcs has β(G) ≥ m2/2n2+m/2n, and this bound is optimal for infinitely many m, n. Using this result we prove that a simple Eulerian digraph contains a cycle of length at most 6n2/m, and has an Eulerian subgraph with minimum degree at least m2/24n3. Both estimates are tight up to a constant factor. Finally, motivated by a conjecture of Bollobás and Scott, we also show how to find long cycles in Eulerian digraphs.

Every graphon defines a random graph on any given number n of vertices. It was known that the graphon is random-free if and only if the entropy of this random graph is subquadratic. We prove that for random-free graphons, this entropy can grow as fast as any subquadratic function. However, if the graphon belongs to the closure of a random-free hereditary graph property, then the entropy is O(n log n). We also give a simple construction of a non-step-function random-free graphon for which this entropy is linear, refuting a conjecture of Janson.

Let G be a finite graph with minimum degree r. Form a random subgraph Gp of G by taking each edge of G into Gp independently and with probability p. We prove that for any constant ε > 0, if $p=\frac{1+\epsilon}{r}$, then Gp is non-planar with probability approaching 1 as r grows. This generalizes classical results on planarity of binomial random graphs.

We compute the first three terms of the 1/d expansions for the growth constants and one-point functions of nearest-neighbour lattice trees and lattice (bond) animals on the integer lattice $\mathbb{Z}^d$, with rigorous error estimates. The proof uses the lace expansion, together with a new expansion for the one-point functions based on inclusion–exclusion.