For sufficiency, take a matching in a graph of maximum size and suppose a left vertex is unmatched. Follow unused edges from left to right and matching edges back to the left. An unmatched reachable right vertex yields an augmenting path in a matching, contradicting maximal size. Otherwise let be the reachable left and right sets. Every member of is matched to a distinct member of , and every member of is reached this way. Since , we obtain , contradicting the Hall condition. Finiteness ensures that a maximum-size matching in a graph exists.
The alternative Hall induction through a tight set uses mathematical induction: a proper nonempty subset with splits off a balanced induced subgraph; without such a tight set, deleting one chosen edge's endpoints preserves the Hall condition on the smaller left side.
The Hall marriage theorem states that a finite bipartite graph with vertex classes and has a matching in a graph saturating if and only if
Necessity 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 gives
and 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 gives
Since , 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 least
chains.
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