A classical result of Erdős, Lovász and Spencer from the late 1970s asserts that the dimension of the feasible region of densities of graphs with at most k vertices in large graphs is equal to the number of non-trivial connected graphs with at most k vertices. Indecomposable permutations play the role of connected graphs in the realm of permutations, and Glebov et al. showed that pattern densities of indecomposable permutations are independent, i.e., the dimension of the feasible region of densities of permutation patterns of size at most k is at least the number of non-trivial indecomposable permutations of size at most k. However, this lower bound is not tight already for $k=3$. We prove that the dimension of the feasible region of densities of permutation patterns of size at most k is equal to the number of non-trivial Lyndon permutations of size at most k. The proof exploits an interplay between algebra and combinatorics inherent to the study of Lyndon words.

We study generalised quasirandom graphs whose vertex set consists of $q$ parts (of not necessarily the same sizes) with edges within each part and between each pair of parts distributed quasirandomly; such graphs correspond to the stochastic block model studied in statistics and network science. Lovász and Sós showed that the structure of such graphs is forced by homomorphism densities of graphs with at most $(10q)^q+q$ vertices; subsequently, Lovász refined the argument to show that graphs with $4(2q+3)^8$ vertices suffice. Our results imply that the structure of generalised quasirandom graphs with $q\ge 2$ parts is forced by homomorphism densities of graphs with at most $4q^2-q$ vertices, and, if vertices in distinct parts have distinct degrees, then $2q+1$ vertices suffice. The latter improves the bound of $8q-4$ due to Spencer.

We prove the following 30 year-old conjecture of Győri and Tuza: the edges of every n-vertex graph G can be decomposed into complete graphs C1,. . .,Cℓ of orders two and three such that |C1|+···+|Cℓ| ≤ (1/2+o(1))n2. This result implies the asymptotic version of the old result of Erdős, Goodman and Pósa that asserts the existence of such a decomposition with ℓ ≤ n2/4.

Nešetřil and Ossona de Mendez introduced the notion of first-order convergence, which unifies the notions of convergence for sparse and dense graphs. They asked whether, if (G i )i∈ℕ is a sequence of graphs with M being their first-order limit and v is a vertex of M, then there exists a sequence (v i )i∈ℕ of vertices such that the graphs G i rooted at v i converge to M rooted at v. We show that this holds for almost all vertices v of M, and we give an example showing that the statement need not hold for all vertices.

We show that any n-vertex complete graph with edges coloured with three colours contains a set of at most four vertices such that the number of the neighbours of these vertices in one of the colours is at least 2n/3. The previous best value, proved by Erdős, Faudree, Gould, Gyárfás, Rousseau and Schelp in 1989, is 22. It is conjectured that three vertices suffice.

A graph H is called common if the sum of the number of copies of H in a graph G and the number in the complement of G is asymptotically minimized by taking G to be a random graph. Extending a conjecture of Erdős, Burr and Rosta conjectured that every graph is common. Thomason disproved both conjectures by showing that K4 is not common. It is now known that in fact the common graphs are very rare. Answering a question of Sidorenko and of Jagger, Št'ovíček and Thomason from 1996 we show that the 5-wheel is common. This provides the first example of a common graph that is not three-colourable.

It is known that a Steiner triple system is projective if and only if it does not contain the four-triple configuration ${{C}_{14}}$ . We find three configurations such that a Steiner triple system is affine if and only if it does not contain one of these configurations. Similarly, we characterise Hall triple systems using two forbidden configurations.

Our characterisations have several interesting corollaries in the area of edge-colourings of graphs. A cubic graph $G$ is $S$ -edge-colourable for a Steiner triple system $S$ if its edges can be coloured with points of $S$ in such a way that the points assigned to three edges sharing a vertex form a triple in $S$ . Among others, we show that all cubic graphs are $S$ -edge-colourable for every non-projective non-affine point-transitive Steiner triple system $S$ .