Matematik, KTH SF2740, Graph Theory

Svante Linusson HT 2017

Solutions to exam 2018-04-06

SF2740 Graph Theory
Part I: Theory For this part all answers can be found in the text book.

Part II: Problems

6. (20p) Let T = (V, E) be a tree with no vertex of degree 2 and |T | ≥ 2. Prove that T has
more leaves than other vertices.

Solution: Let n be the number of verticesPof T , and ` the number of leaves. By double
counting the edges we get that 2|E(T )| = v∈T P d(v). Since T is a tree |E| = n − 1 and
since there are no vertex of degree 2 we have v∈T d(v) ≥ 1 · ` + 3(n − `). This implies
2(n − 1) ≥ ` + 3(n − `) which is equivalent with −2 ≥ (n − `) − `. Thus there are in fact at
least 2 more leaves than other vertices.

7. (20p) Let c > 0 be a fixed constant. Does every large enough graph G, with ||G|| < c · |G|,
contain a set of 100 independent vertices?

Solution: The answer is yes.

n

Let n = |G|.n2
One way of solving this problem is to note that
||G|| < c · n ⇐⇒ ||G|| > 2 − c · n = 2 − (c + 1/2)n. We know by Turan’s theorem that
if ||G|| > t99 (n), then G contains a K 100 which is the same as G having 100 independent
vertices.
Claim: tr−1 (n) ≤ 12 n2 r−1
r−2
, with equality iff r − 1 divides n.
Proof of Claim. If r − 1|n then we know that each part (that is each set of independent
vertices) in the Turan graph
T r−1 (n) has exactly n/(r − 1) vertices and the number of
n 2 r
edges is then exactly ( r−1 ) 2 , which is exactly what is claimed. For the general case let
n = k(r − 1) + i, 0 ≤ i ≤ r − 2. Then i parts will have k + 1 vertices and r −
i − 1 parts
will have k vertices. Counting all possible edges between all these parts we get: 2i (k + 1)2 +
i(r − i − 1)(k + 1)k + r−i−1 1 r−2 i
= 21 r−2 n2 + 2i ( r−1
i

2 2 2


2
k = · · · = 2 r−1
(n − i ) + 2 r−1
− 1), which
proves the Claim.
2
We can now use this inequality with r = 100, t99 (n) ≤ 21 n2 100−1 100−2
= 12 n2 (1− 99
1
) < n2 −(c+ 12 )n
n
as soon as 2·99 > (c + 12 ), which is true for all large enough n.

Can also be solved using probabilistic methods.

8. Let k ≥ 2. Show that every k-connected graph of order at least 2k contains a cycle of
length at least 2k.

Solution: Let G be such a graph for which this is not the case. Let C be a cycle of
maximal length ` < 2k. There are hence at least one vertex v outside C. Let X be the
connect component that contains v in G \ C. Two neighbours in C cannot both be adjacent
to vertices in X since then there would be a longer cycle combining C with a path of length
at least 2 via X. Thus at most `/2 < k vertices in C are adjacent with some vertex in X.
But that set of vertices in C would disconnect X from the rest of the graph, contradicting
that G is k-connected.

9. (20p) Let G be a complete graph on n ≥ 2 vertices. Consider the probability space Ω,

consisting of the set of orientations of edges in G, with all orientations being equally likely
n
(i.e probability 2−( 2 ) each). An element of this space is called a random tournament.
a) Prove that the expected number of directed Hamiltonian paths in a random tourna-
ment is 2−n+1 n!
b) Prove that, for all n ≥ 2, there exist a tournament on n vertices (i.e. an orientation
of G) which has at least 2−n+1 n! directed Hamilton paths.

Solution: a) Let P be the set of paths of length n − 1, which correspond bijectively to the
set of permutations of length n, thus there are n! possible Hamiltonian paths. All orienta-
tions equally likely are equivalent to the probability of each being directed each way with
probability 1/2 independent of the other edges direction. The probability that a particular
path has all the n − 1 edges directed in the direction of the path is thus (1/2)n−1 . Let X be
the random variable counting how many directed Hamiltonian paths there are and let XP be
the indicator random variable for a given path P ∈ P, i.e.
(
1, if P is a directed Hamiltonian path
XP =
0, otherwise.
By linearity of expectation we get
X X 1
E[X] = E[ XP ] = E[XP ] = n!( )n−1 .
P ∈P P ∈P
2

b) If the number of directed Hamiltonian paths is strictly less than 21−n n! for all orientations
then the expected value cannot equal to 21−n n!, which gives a contradiction. In formulas
X 21−n
X n!−1 21−n
X n!−1
E[X] = P[X = i] · i = P[X = i] · i < P[X = i]21−n n! ≤ 21−n n!,
i i=0 i=0
a contradiction.