Suppose and . The breadth-first exploration of a binomial random graph has deterministic drift up to steps. Its weighted martingale has variance . For , the Doob L2 maximal inequality makes its maximum smaller than with high probability. Then throughout , giving a graph component of order .
For the upper expectation bound, let . The dominating binomial branching process has branching survival probability by the binomial branching survival correction. Its branching process conditioned on extinction has mean and total-progeny expected value . Therefore . Since and , this yields the matching upper bound. Controlling rare large components is necessary to conclude an expected value asymptotic from a typical-size statement.
Chromatic number of the half-density binomial random graph Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-07
For the binomial random graph , the chromatic number is with high probability. A first moment method bounds the independence number above. Edge-disjoint clique packing in the complement graph, followed by an edge-exposure martingale and a union bound over moderately large vertex sets, supplies independent sets for greedy colouring by removing independent sets.
Continuity of fixed-choice percolation 2026-10-07
A fixed-choice Achlioptas process cannot have its largest component of a graph jump from to a fixed positive fraction of within steps, with high probability. The proof combines forced merging of large components and persistence of unsampled graph components. An assumed jump forces positive vertex mass in each band slightly before the jump: insufficient smaller components can feed the final large component, while enough components above would merge too early. Persistence carries a fixed positive amount of each band to a common time. Taking sufficiently many disjoint bands with then counts more than vertices. The number of offered candidates is fixed throughout this argument. Riordan and Warnke establish this obstruction and broader continuity results in their original research paper.
Convex-chain median concentration 2026-10-14
Let be an integer median for the longest convex chain length of independent uniform points in a triangle. If , fix a certificate of coordinates. Every configuration with must disagree with at least of those coordinates; equal weights prove Talagrand convex distance separation at least . Talagrand's convex distance inequality then gives . Set , then , in the two respective applications to obtain the displayed tails for positive integer . The exact chain-counting bound gives . Hence any interval centred at with length , where , contains with high probability. No upper restriction on the growth of is required.
Fixed-order tree-component window 2026-10-14
For fixed and , the expected number of tree components of order is asymptotic to throughout the displayed window. It tends to infinity: split at and to obtain lower bounds of orders , , and . Distinct overlapping vertex sets cannot both be components; disjoint sets have joint-to-product probability ratio . Thus the relative variance vanishes, proving a component of order exists with high probability.
Growing-clique overlap bound 2026-10-14
Write and . The first mean condition implies eventually. For , this yields , and each fixed- term tends to zero when . The second mean condition implies eventually. Writing gives for , and . Both bounding series are summable. The overlap formula for the variance of a clique count therefore gives relative variance tending to zero; the second moment method proves an -clique exists with high probability.
Hamiltonicity-to-pancyclicity sprinkling principle Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
For a decreasing probability sequence , if contains a Hamilton cycle with high probability, then is pancyclic with high probability for every fixed sufficiently large ; three independent rounds suffice. One first exposes a Hamiltonian round and uses the independent sprinkled edges to create cycles of every shorter length.
Logarithmic-regime giant component 2026-10-07
Fix , , and with . A binomial random graph has one giant component of the displayed order and all other graph components are tree components of orders at most , with high probability. The expected value and variance of the isolated vertex count concentrate it around . A Cayley formula upper bound for connected sets excludes component sizes through a small fixed fraction of ; the empty-graph cut bound excludes the remaining sizes up to . An extra-edge count excludes cyclic small graph components. The expected value of the number of vertices in small nonisolated tree components is , where . The Markov inequality completes the count of vertices outside the unique large graph component.
Marked-set connectivity threshold Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
For a fixed set of vertices, let be the first step at which they all belong to one graph component. In the uniform random graph process, lies between and with high probability for every . Below that scale the marked isolated vertex count has divergent expected value and small relative variance. Above it the logarithmic-regime giant component misses vertices; exchangeability and a union bound show that none are marked. The label coupling then transfers the two assertions to the process.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 12 1 ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Let count -cliques, and put . Since , the Markov inequality gives . Any larger clique contains an -clique, so it remains to prove with high probability.
We give the required growing-clique overlap bound explicitly. Set and, for ,The quantity is the probability that a uniformly chosen -set overlaps a fixed -set in exactly vertices. Two clique indicators share exactly edge requirements, so their joint-to-product ratio is . Overlap zero or one gives independence. Hence the overlap formula for the variance of a clique count impliesWe must bound this sum with allowed to grow.
Eventually and . Using , these inequalities giveFor , a union bound over the selected shared vertices gives . Put . Since and ,For each fixed , the first bound tends to zero if stays bounded, because its power of is negative. If , the middle bound tends to zero because . Thus each fixed- term tends to zero along arbitrary admissible sequences. The bounding series converges. Splitting at a fixed large index, then taking and the index to infinity, proves that the entire lower-half sum is .
For the upper half write . The exact diagonal comparison isFor , the second bound on givesThe last inequality uses : the exponent of in the bracket is negative, so substituting bounds it above. Uniformly for this range of , . Indeed , and concavity of , checked at and , gives . It follows thatThus . The second moment method gives . Combining this with the absence of larger cliques provesThe restriction on is used in both overlap ranges; divergence of a clique count in a binomial random graph alone would not suffice for arbitrary growing .
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.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2006 iii Paper 14 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Expose the vertices in order, revealing at step every edge from vertex to an earlier vertex. With the resulting filtration , putThis is the vertex exposure for chromatic number martingale. Its increments have conditional mean zero and satisfy , by the permitted Lipschitz condition.
Here is the required exponential-moment proof of the Azuma-Hoeffding inequality. More generally, suppose for deterministic . Convexity of the exponential function gives, for ,Taking conditional expectation and using the zero conditional mean yieldsFor the last inequality, integrate for , and use evenness. A zero simply means a zero increment. Iterated conditional expectation now givesFor , the strict Markov bound on the event givesThe strict inequality follows directly by integrating on that event; it is also immediate if the event is empty. Optimize at and apply the same argument to the negative increments. For and , the union bound proves, for every ,At the displayed strict bound is trivial.
For the second conclusion write and choose a fixed . If , then , whose probability is less than . Thus the given positive probability forces . For sufficiently large ,Here the non-strict one-sided bound follows by the usual non-strict Markov inequality. Consequently the asserted upper bound holds with high probability, uniformly over any sequence satisfying the stated assumption.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2006 iii Paper 14 4 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
A connected graph with has no isolated vertices. Conversely, a disconnected graph with no isolated vertices has a connected component with size between and . We must show that this latter event has probability tending to zero.
The permitted component-size estimate excludes sizes between and with high probability. For the remaining small sizes, let count components with vertices. A connected graph on a fixed -vertex set contains a spanning tree. By the Cayley formula, there are labelled trees, as follows from the Prüfer code bijection between labelled trees and sequences of labels. A union bound over the trees, together with the absence of every edge to the complementary vertex set, givesPut and . Using and , uniformly for we obtainHere . Therefore, with ,The Markov inequality excludes all these small components with high probability. Together with the permitted estimate, this proves that the difference between the probability of connectivity and the probability of no isolated vertices tends to zero. Hence
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2006 iii Paper 14 4 Solution 2026-10-14
For the unheaded degree-one continuation, write , where indicates that vertex has degree one. Withwe haveFor distinct vertices , separate the cases where their connecting edge is present or absent. If it is present, all their other incident edges must be absent. If it is absent, each vertex chooses its unique neighbour among the other vertices; those two neighbours may coincide. The respective edge constraints are independent even in that case. ThusDividing by gives the exact ratioThe first term tends to zero because has order ; the second tends to one. Consequently its variance satisfiesThe Chebyshev inequality now yields . A vertex of degree one exists with high probability, even though the limiting probability of having an isolated vertex is strictly between zero and one.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2010 iii Paper 12 3 iii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The precise external concentration result we use is Talagrand's convex distance inequality: for a finite product of independent standard probability spaces, a measurable event of positive probability, and ,Our coordinates are the independent uniformly sampled points of the triangle, so the hypothesis holds. Part (ii) therefore gives, for integers ,Indeed every configuration in the first event has at least the distance from part (ii) to the second event. If one event is empty, the displayed product bound is automatic. This is the only use of the product-space theorem; the geometric separation was proved directly in part (ii). A precise source for that theorem is Section 4.1 of Talagrand's original product-space concentration paper.
Choose an integer median , so and . First set , in the product bound, and then set , . For positive integers this yields the convex-chain median concentration estimatesThe lower event is empty if in our sampling model; the upper event is empty if . Thus the stated bounds remain valid for all positive integers . Also for .
By part (i), with . Let , take , and use the deterministic interval . Its length is exactly . As and are integers, falling outside this interval implies one of the two tail events with . ThereforeFor positive ,Since and , this exponent is at leastConsequentlyThus lies with high probability in the required interval. This proof works for every , including growth faster than ; no extra restriction on is needed. The scale comes from the square root of the certificate size at the median.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 iii Paper 9 1 ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
It suffices to prove the assertion after replacing by : that replacement gives a tighter interval. Thus assume and , and putAt , let count isolated vertices in . The same indicator random variable calculation as for all isolated vertices givesBy the Chebyshev inequality, with high probability. Since eventually, the marked vertices are then not all connected.
At , the logarithmic-regime giant component result applies with and any fixed . Its unique giant component misses vertices. On the event that it misses at most twice that number, exchangeability makes the missed vertex set uniform conditional on its size. A union bound therefore givesThus all of is connected at with high probability.
For the uniform random graph process, assign uniform labels to the edges of the complete graph as independent random variables and reveal them in label order. The binomial random graph is the prefix containing the labels at most , where has a binomial distribution with parameters and . Its variance at is , whereas the gap between and the relevant endpoint is . The Chebyshev inequality gives and with high probability, with harmless integer rounding. The monotone graph property that all marked vertices are connected now impliesThe marked-set connectivity threshold is lower than the threshold for connecting every vertex, because only about specified vertices need to avoid the small graph components.