Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 12 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Couple the uniform random graph process by giving every possible edge an independent uniform label in and revealing them in increasing order. The graph at label threshold is a binomial random graph. Define as the first step with no isolated vertices and as the first connected graph. Deterministically . We prove the reverse inequality with high probability by tracking the same process through a short interval.
Put , , and . At the isolated vertex count hasThe variance estimate follows by comparing two isolated-vertex indicators, whose joint-to-product probability ratio is . Thus with high probability. Also the Markov inequality gives with probability tending to one.
At this same threshold, exclude every graph component with order . For , any such component contains a spanning tree. The Cayley formula and a union bound therefore giveIn this range the bracket is at most . Summing over gives . For , even the cut-absence bound is enough:The bracket tends to zero, so this range also has total probability . Consequently the graph at consists of one component of order greater than and its isolated-vertex set , where with high probability.
Conditional on the entire graph at , every unrevealed edge label remains independently uniform on . In particular,There are no isolated vertices at with high probability, because their expected value is asymptotic to . On the intersection of these events, each vertex of loses isolation by joining the original large component, never by forming a separate small component with another vertex of . At every step between these two thresholds there is therefore one nontrivial component and some isolated vertices. The final isolated vertex disappears precisely when the graph becomes connected. This proves the connectivity hitting time equals disappearance of isolated vertices result:
For the critical-window probability, let with . For each fixed , the falling factorial moment of the isolated-vertex count isuniformly for such shifts. Apply the Bonferroni inequalities to the zero-count event. Its odd and even truncations bracket by partial sums of . Since , their remainders tend uniformly to zero. Hence . The process equality just proved changes this probability by at most its failure probability. ThereforeThe ratio follows because the denominator is bounded below by ; no convergence of is needed.
The printed second conclusion has the complementary denominator and is false as written. For , the printed ratio tends to . Its denominator is correct for the probability of being disconnected. Thus either remove the leading in the denominator or replace “connected” by “disconnected”; the proof supplies both corrected versions.