Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 ii Paper 4 17G Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
The Hall marriage theorem states that a finite bipartite graph with vertex classes and has a matching in a graph saturating if and only ifNecessity is immediate: distinct vertices of must be matched to distinct vertices of .
For sufficiency, induct on . If every nonempty proper satisfies the strict bound , choose any edge and delete its endpoints. Every loses at most the neighbour , so Hall's condition remains true; induction supplies a matching of the smaller graph, to which is added.
Otherwise there is a nonempty proper tight set with . Hall's condition holds on the induced graph with parts , so induction matches . For , Hall's condition on givesand hence . Induction therefore matches into . The two matchings are disjoint and together saturate , completing the proof through Hall induction through a tight set.
Identify a subset of with its binary characteristic vector. Then is the hypercube graph, and every edge changes set size by exactly one. The induced subgraph on is therefore bipartite with those two levels as its vertex classes.
Let . Every member of has neighbours in , obtained by adding one element, while every member of is incident with at most of these edges. Double-counting the edges between the two families givesSince , we have , and hence . Hall's theorem yields the requested adjacent-level matching in a Boolean lattice, saturating .
Finally, every chain in a partially ordered set in the Boolean lattice contains at most one member of the middle level . Any chain partition therefore uses at leastchains.
For every , choose one of the matchings just constructed and orient its edges upward. These edges partition all levels at or below into chains ending at distinct middle-level sets. Taking complements gives, for every , a matching from into ; orienting its edges upward extends those chains through all upper levels. Every subset belongs to exactly one resulting chain and every chain meets exactly once. Thus this symmetric chain decomposition of a Boolean lattice has one chain per middle-level set, and the minimum is
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2020 ii Paper 1 17G a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
Let have vertices and edges. Its complement graph hasedges. If both graphs were planar, the planar graph edge bound would giveEquivalently, , whose larger root is . Thus an integer is impossible, proving that
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2020 ii Paper 3 17G iv Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
If the edge lies in no triangle, no vertex can be adjacent to both endpoints; hence the neighbourhoods satisfy .
Suppose . The two disjoint neighbourhoods then partition . If both were independent, every edge would run between these two parts, so would be bipartite andcontrary to . Thus at least one neighbourhood contains an edge, and that edge forms a triangle with or .
We now prove by induction on the Triangle lower bound one edge above the Mantel threshold: every graph on vertices with at least edges has at least triangles. Part (ii) is the base case. For , if every edge lies in a triangle, part (iii) givesOtherwise choose an edge lying in no triangle and put . Deleting removes edges, so the graph hasIf , induction gives at least triangles in , while the nonindependence proved above supplies a further triangle through or .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2023 iii Paper 122 1 b Solution 2026-09-28
Let count the triangles of the binomial random graph . ThenTwo distinct triangle indicators are dependent only when the triangles share an edge. Hence their ordered Janson dependency sum is
If , then . The first Janson inequality givesFor the reverse bound, the events that individual triangles are absent are decreasing, so Harris' inequality giveswhere keeps the logarithmic estimate uniform. Thus the probability is .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2023 ii Paper 2 17H b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
Factor the proposed polynomial:In particular,By the two-colourability criterion for bipartite graphs, every finite bipartite graph has at least one proper two-colouring, so its chromatic polynomial is positive at . Therefore cannot be the chromatic polynomial of a bipartite graph.
It is nevertheless a chromatic polynomial. Start with the complete graph , whose vertices may be coloured inways, and attach one leaf to any vertex. After the triangle is coloured, the leaf has available colours. The chromatic polynomial after attaching a leaf therefore gives
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2023 ii Paper 4 17H b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
The Hall marriage theorem says that a bipartite graph with classes has a matching saturating if and only ifwhere is the graph neighbourhood of . Necessity follows because the matching sends the vertices of to distinct vertices of .
For sufficiency, add vertices , join to every vertex of , and join every vertex of to . Let be an - vertex separator, and write and . If an edge joined a vertex of to a vertex of , it would give an - path avoiding . HenceHall's condition givesand therefore . By Menger theorem, there are internally vertex-disjoint - paths. Each has the form with and ; disjointness makes all the and all the distinct. Their middle edges form a matching saturating .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2023 ii Paper 4 17H c Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
Construct a bipartite graph with left vertices , right vertices , and an edge exactly when . For , every point of lies in some adjacent to one of those . ThusUsing finite additivity of Lebesgue measure and the equal-volume hypotheses,Hence for every . The Hall marriage theorem supplies a perfect matching, which has the form for a permutation of . Every matched edge means precisely that .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2025 iii Paper 164 2 Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
Write , , and . We construct a random graph homomorphism . Choose a root of the tree. Map it according to the degree-biased vertex distribution on the corresponding side of the bipartite graph; after mapping any vertex, map each child independently and uniformly to a neighbour of its parent's image.
Every oriented tree edge is then mapped uniformly onto the edges of . Every tree vertex in has the degree-biased marginal on , of entropy , and every vertex in has the analogous marginal of entropy . Repeated use of the chain rule for information entropy along the rooted tree givesSince a -vertex tree has edges,The maximum entropy distribution on a finite set gives and . HenceIf is the number of bipartition-respecting graph homomorphisms , the support of has size , so the maximum entropy distribution on a finite set also gives . ThusThere are bipartition-respecting maps in total, so a uniformly chosen one is a graph homomorphism with probability at least . This proves the Sidorenko inequality for trees.
Popular sum 2026-10-07
A popular sum of a finite set is an element having at least a specified number of ordered representations as , with . Popular sums define a dense bipartite graph when additive energy is large. Since the total representation count is , there are at most popular sums.
Random cut lower bound 2026-10-03
Every finite graph with edges has a cut of a graph of size at least , and hence a spanning bipartite graph with at least edges. Put each vertex independently on either side with equal probability. Every edge crosses with probability , so linearity of expectation gives expected cut size .
Regular pair of bipartite partitions Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Let and be set partitions of the two parts of a bipartite graph. The pair of partitions is -regular whenThus a uniformly random pair in lies in an irregular cell pair with probability at most .
Restricted sumset 2026-10-07
For finite sets in an abelian group and a bipartite graph , the restricted sumset is . It retains only sums corresponding to graph edges.
Sidorenko conjecture Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
The Sidorenko conjecture states that every bipartite graph satisfiesfor every bipartite host graph . Thus a random map is at least as likely to preserve every edge as the heuristic that treats the edge constraints independently predicts.
If a graph and its complement graph are both bipartite, then the graph has at most four vertices. Indeed, each part of a bipartition of the original graph induces a clique in the complement and therefore has at most two vertices. The bound is attained by the four-vertex path, whose complement is another four-vertex path.
Staggered magnetization Created 2026-09-28 Updated 2026-10-06
The staggered magnetization weights the local magnetization with opposite signs on the two sublattices of a bipartite graph. It is nonzero in a Néel state even when the uniform magnetization vanishes.
Triangle replacement for self-avoiding walks 2026-10-07
Replace every degree-three vertex of a graph in one class of a bipartite graph by a triangle with one port for each incident edge. A self-avoiding walk whose endpoints remain in the other class cannot make two completed passages through the same triangle: each passage needs two unused ports and only three exist. Each old two-edge passage has exactly two replacements, of lengths three and four. Therefore the restricted generating functions satisfy . If the old radius is , the new radius obeys .
Tripartite graph 2026-10-05
A tripartite graph has a set partition of its vertices into three classes, with every edge joining different classes. Each pair of classes induces a bipartite graph, and every triangle in a graph uses one vertex from each class.
Two-colourability criterion for bipartite graphs Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24