Tutorial 6 Solutions

MATH 239 Winter 2024

Week of February 26

T-6-1. Construct two graphs H and G, each of which has degree sequence (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3), where H
and G are not isomorphic.
Solution.
(a) Consider the following pair of graphs:

H G

Each of H and G has degree sequence (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3), but they are not isomorphic. In particular,
H contains a triangle and G does not. □

T-6-2. Prove that any graph with at least two vertices has two vertices of the same degree.
Solution. Let n ≥ 2 and let G be a graph with n vertices. Let (d1 , . . . , dn ) be the degree
sequence of G and let V (G) = {v1 , . . . , vn }, where deg(vi ) = di for each i = 1, . . . , n. We just
need to check that there exist 1 ≤ i < j ≤ n such that di = dj . Suppose that no such indices
exist. Thus, we get d1 < d2 < · · · < dn . Since d1 ≥ 0, we have di ≥ d1 + (i − 1) for each
i = 1, . . . , n. In particular, dn ≥ n = 1, so vn is adjacent to all the vertices of {v1 , . . . , vn−1 }
and dn = n − 1. But then v1 is adjacent to vn and d1 ≥ 1, so dn ≥ n, a contradiction. □

T-6-3. For each n ≥ 2, define a graph Gn where the vertices are all binary strings of length n and two
vertices x, y ∈ {0, 1}n are connected by an edge iff either (i) they differ in exactly 2 positions,
or (ii) they differ in exactly n positions.

(a) Draw G3 .

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MATH 239 Winter 2024 Tutorial 6 Solutions

(b) For which n is Gn a regular graph? Determine the degree of regularity.

(c) For which n is Gn bipartite? Justify your answer.

[Extra practice.]

(d) For which n is Gn connected? Justify your answer.

Solution.

(a)
101

000

011 110

010

111

100 001

(b) Gn is regular for all n ≥ 2. When n = 2 it is 1-regular. When n ≥ 3 each binary string
is connected to the n2 binary strings that are obtained by flipping two of its bits, as

well as the string obtained by flipping all of its bits. So for n ≥ 3, Gn is k-regular with
k = 1 + n2 .

(c) G2 is bipartite with bipartition V (G) = {00, 11} ∪ {01, 10}. For n ≥ 3, Gn contains a
triangle and is therefore not bipartite. In particular, there is a triangle in Gn for n ≥ 3 on
the vertices {0n , 110n−2 , 1010n−3 }.
(d) Gn is connected if and only if n is odd. If n is even, neighboring vertices always have the
same parity of the number of ones, and therefore there is no path between, e.g., vertices
0n and 10n−1 since one of them has an even number of ones and one of them has an
odd number of ones. If n is odd, we now show there is a walk in Gn between any two
vertices a, b ∈ {0, 1}n . Note that it suffices to show that, for any vertex a and any bit
i ∈ {1, 2, . . . , n} there is a walk from a to the vertex a′ obtained by flipping the ith bit
(we can then construct a walk between any two vertices a, b by concatenating walks that
flip all the bits on which a, b differ). Note that the graph Gn contains an edge between
any two vertices that differ in two bits, and any two vertices that differ in n bits. We can
construct a walk from a to a′ by first flipping all the bits (this part of the walk contains a
single edge of Gn ) and then flipping the bits in the set {1, 2, . . . , n} \ {i} two at a time
(this part of the walk contains (n − 1)/2 edges of Gn ).