Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2011 ii Paper 4 17F i Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
With one edge colour, . Suppose the assertion is known for colours, and take . At any vertex, among its incident edges some colour occurs on at least edges. Let be their other endpoints. If an edge within has that colour, it completes a monochromatic triangle with the chosen vertex. Otherwise uses only colours internally, and the inductive hypothesis gives a monochromatic triangle there. ThusInduction now yieldsTogether with the base case, for every positive . This is a constructive multicolour Ramsey bound.