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Textbook A Walk Through Combinatorics An Introduction To Enumeration and Graph Theory 4Th Edition Miklos Bona Ebook All Chapter PDF
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10258_9789813148840_tp.indd 1 31/8/16 3:29 PM
B1948 Governing Asia
For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright Clearance
Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to photocopy
is not required from the publisher.
Printed in Singapore
To Linda
To Mikike, Benny, and Vinnie
v
B1948 Governing Asia
Foreword
vii
July 28, 2016 17:25 ws-book9x6 A Walk Through Combinatorics book page viii
Richard Stanley
Cambridge, Massachusetts
February 6, 2002
July 28, 2016 17:25 ws-book9x6 A Walk Through Combinatorics book page ix
Preface
The best way to get to know Yosemite National Park is to walk through it,
on many different paths. In the optimal case, the gorgeous sights provide
ample compensation for our sore muscles. In this book, we intend to explain
the basics of Combinatorics while walking through its beautiful results.
Starting from our very first chapter, we will show numerous examples of
what may be the most attractive feature of this field: that very simple tools
can be very powerful at the same time. We will also show the other side of
the coin, that is, that sometimes totally elementary-looking problems turn
out to be unexpectedly deep, or even unknown.
This book is meant to be a textbook for an introductory combinatorics
course that can take one or two semesters. We included a very extensive list
of exercises, ranging in difficulty from “routine” to “worthy of independent
publication”. In each section, we included exercises that contain material
not explicitly discussed in the text before. We chose to do this to provide
instructors with some extra choices if they want to shift the emphasis of
their course.
It goes without saying that we covered the classics, that is, combinato-
rial choice problems, and graph theory. We included some more elaborate
concepts, such as Ramsey theory, the Probabilistic Method, and Pattern
Avoidance (the latter is probably a first of its kind). While we realize that
we can only skim the surface of these areas, we believe they are interesting
enough to catch the attention of some students, even at first sight. Most
undergraduate students enroll in at most one Combinatorics course during
their studies, therefore it is important that they see as many captivating
examples as possible. It is in this spirit that we included two new chapters
in the second edition, on Algorithms, and on Computational Complexity.
We believe that the best undergraduate students, those who will get to the
ix
July 28, 2016 17:25 ws-book9x6 A Walk Through Combinatorics book page x
end of the book, should be acquainted with the extremely intriguing ques-
tions that abound in these two areas. The third edition has two challenging
new chapters, one on Block Designs and codes obtained from designs, and
the other one on counting unlabeled structures.
We wrote this book as we believe that combinatorics, researching it,
teaching it, learning it, is always fun. We hope that at the end of the walk,
readers will agree.
****
Exercises that are thought to be significantly harder than average are
marked by one or more + signs. An exercise with a single + sign is prob-
ably at the level of a harder homework problem. The difficulty level of
an exercise with more than one + sign may be comparable to an indepen-
dent publication. An exercise that is thought to be significantly easier than
average is marked by a - sign.
We listened to the readers, and added new examples where the readers
suggested. This fourth edition has about 240 new exercises. We placed
three of them at the end of each section, under the header Quick Check.
The majority of exercises are still at the end of the chapters.
We provide Supplementary Exercises without solutions at the end of
each chapter. These typically include, but are not limited to, the easi-
est exercises in that chapter. A solution manual for the Supplementary
Exercises is available for Instructors.
Gainesville, FL
August 2016
July 28, 2016 17:25 ws-book9x6 A Walk Through Combinatorics book page xi
Acknowledgments
This book has been written while I was teaching Combinatorics at the
University of Florida, and during my sabbatical at the University of Penn-
sylvania in the Fall of 2005. I am certainly indebted to the books I used in
my teaching during this time. These were “Introductory Combinatorics” by
Kenneth Bogarth, “Enumerative Combinatorics I.-II” by Richard Stanley,
“Matching Theory” by László Lovász and Michael D. Plummer, and “A
Course in Combinatorics” by J. H. van Lint and R. M. Wilson. The two
new chapters of the second edition were certainly influenced by the books of
which I learned the theory of algorithms and computation, namely “Com-
putational Complexity” by Christos Papadimitriou, “Introduction to the
Theory of Computation” by Michael Sipser, who taught me the subject in
person, “Algorithms and Complexity” by Herbert Wilf, and “Introduction
to Algorithms” by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest and Stein. Several exercises
in the book come from my long history as a student mathematics competi-
tion participant. This includes various national and international contests,
as well as the long-term contest run by the Hungarian student journal
KÖMAL, and the Russian student journal Kvant.
I am grateful to my students who never stopped asking questions and
showed which part of the material needed further explanation.
Some of the presented material was part of my own research, sometimes
in collaboration. I would like to say thanks to my co-authors, Andrew
MacLennan, Bruce Sagan, Rodica Simion, Daniel Spielman, Géza Tóth,
and Dennis White. I am also indebted to my former advisor, Richard
Stanley, who introduced me to the fascinating area of Pattern Avoidance,
discussed in Chapter 14.
I am deeply appreciative for the constructive suggestions of my col-
leagues Vincent Vatter, Andrew Vince, Neil White, and Aleksandr Vayner.
xi
July 28, 2016 17:25 ws-book9x6 A Walk Through Combinatorics book page xii
A significant part of the first edition was written during the summer
of 2001, when I enjoyed the hospitality of my parents, Miklós and Katalin
Bóna, at the Lake Balaton in Hungary.
My gratitude is extended to Joseph Sciacca for the cover page. If you
do not know why a book entitled “A Walk Through Combinatorics” has
such a cover page, you may figure it out when reading Chapter 10.
After the publication of the first edition in 2002, several mathemati-
cians contributed lists of typographical errors to be corrected. Particularly
extensive lists were provided by Margaret Bayer, Richard Ehrenborg, John
Hall, Hyeongkwan Ju, Sergey Kitaev, and Robert Robinson. I am thankful
for their help in making the second edition better by communicating those
lists to me, as well as for similar help from countless other contributors who
will hopefully forgive that I do not list all of them here. The second edition
was improved by a significant list of comments by Margaret Bayer, while
the third edition was similarly helped by the remarks of Glenn Tesler. I am
indebted to Thomas Zaslavsky for numerous conversations and suggestions
that made the paperback version of the third edition better. The fourth
edition was improved by suggestions made by Steven Sam.
Most of all, I must thank my wife Linda, my first reader, who made it
possible for me to spend long hours writing this book while she also had
her hands full. See Exercise 3 of Chapter 15 for further explanation.
July 28, 2016 17:25 ws-book9x6 A Walk Through Combinatorics book page xiii
Contents
Foreword vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
I. Basic Methods
xiii
July 28, 2016 17:25 ws-book9x6 A Walk Through Combinatorics book page xiv
Contents xv
Contents xvii
IV. Horizons
13. Does It Clique? Ramsey Theory 321
13.1 Ramsey Theory for Finite Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
Quick Check . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
13.2 Generalizations of the Ramsey Theorem . . . . . . . . . . 327
Quick Check . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
13.3 Ramsey Theory in Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Quick Check . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
Supplementary Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
Solutions to Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
Contents xix
20. Does Many Mean More Than One? Computational Complexity 553
20.1 Turing Machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553
Quick Check . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556
20.2 Complexity Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556
20.2.1 The Class P . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556
20.2.2 The Class NP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 558
20.2.3 NP-complete Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 565
20.2.4 Other Complexity Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571
Quick Check . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574
Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574
Supplementary Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
Solutions to Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577
Bibliography 583
Index 587
July 28, 2016 17:25 ws-book9x6 A Walk Through Combinatorics book page 1
Chapter 1
Seven is more than six. Four is more than three. Two is more than one.
These statements do not seem to be too interesting, exciting, or deep. We
will see, however, that the famous Pigeon-hole Principle makes excellent use
of them. We choose to start our walk through combinatorics by discussing
the Pigeon-hole Principle because it epitomizes one of the most attractive
treats of this field: the possibility of obtaining very strong results by very
simple means.
Proof. While the statement seems intuitively obvious, we are going to give
a formal proof because proofs of this nature will be used throughout this
book.
We prove our statement in an indirect way, that is, we assume its con-
trary is true, and deduce a contradiction from that assumption. This is a
very common strategy in mathematics; in fact, if we have no idea how to
prove something, we can always try an indirect proof.
Let us assume there is no box with at least two balls. Then each of
the k boxes has either 0 or 1 ball in it. Denote by m the number of boxes
that have zero balls in them; then certainly m ≥ 0. Then, of course, there
are k − m boxes that have one. However, that would mean that the total
number of balls placed into the k boxes is k − m which is a contradiction
1
July 28, 2016 17:25 ws-book9x6 A Walk Through Combinatorics book page 2
In what follows, we will present several applications that show that this
innocuous statement is in fact a very powerful tool.
7777777777777777777777777 j digits
_ 777777777777777777 i digits
7777777000000000000000000 j-i digits equal to 7,
i digits equal to 0
As ai and aj have the same remainder when divided by 2003, there exist
non-negative integers ki , kj , and r so that r ≤ 2002, and ai = 2003ki + r,
and aj = 2003kj + r. This shows that aj − ai = 2003(kj − ki ), so in
particular, aj − ai is divisible by 2003.
This is nice, but we need to show that there is an element in our sequence
that is divisible by 2003, and aj − ai is not an element in our sequence.
Figure 1.1 helps understand why the information that aj − ai is divisible
by 2003 is nevertheless very useful.
Indeed, aj − ai consists of j − i digits equal to 7, then i digits equal to
July 28, 2016 17:25 ws-book9x6 A Walk Through Combinatorics book page 3
0. In other words,
aj − ai = aj−i · 10i ,
and the proof follows as 10i is relatively prime to 2003, so aj−i must be
divisible by 2003.
In this example, the possible values of the remainders were the boxes,
all 2002 of them, while the first 2003 elements of the sequence played the
role of the balls. There were more balls than boxes, so the Pigeon-hole
Principle applied.
Example 1.3. A chess tournament has n participants, and any two players
play one game against each other. Then it is true that in any given point of
time, there are two players who have finished the same number of games.
Solution. First we could think that the Pigeon-hole Principle will not be
applicable here as the number of players (“balls”) is n, and the number of
possibilities for the number of games finished by any one of them (“boxes”)
is also n. Indeed, a player could finish either no games, or one game, or
two games, and so on, up to and including n − 1 games.
The fact, however, that two players play their games against each other,
provides the missing piece of our proof. If there is a player A who has com-
pleted all his n − 1 games, then there cannot be any player who completed
zero games because at the very least, everyone has played with A. There-
fore, the values 0 and n − 1 cannot both occur among the numbers of games
finished by the players at any one time. So the number of possibilities for
these numbers (“boxes”) is at most n − 1 at any given point of time, and
the proof follows.
Quick Check
(1) Prove that among eight integers, there are always two whose difference
is divisible by seven.
(2) A student wrote six distinct positive integers on the board, and pointed
out that none of them had a prime factor larger than 10. Prove that
there are two integers on the board that have a common prime divisor.
Could we make the same conclusion if in the first sentence we replaced
”six” by ”five”?
(3) A bicycle path is 30 miles long, with four rest areas. Prove that either
there are two rest areas that are at most six miles from each other,
July 28, 2016 17:25 ws-book9x6 A Walk Through Combinatorics book page 4
or there is a rest area that is at most six miles away from one of the
endpoints of the path.
Proof. Just as in the proof of Theorem 1.1, we assume the contrary state-
ment. Then each of the m boxes can hold at most r balls, so all the boxes
can hold at most rm < n balls, which contradicts the requirement that we
distribute n balls.
Example 1.5. Ten points are given within a square of unit size. Then
there are two of them that are closer to each other than 0.48, and there are
three of them that can be covered by a disk of radius 0.5.
Solution. Let us split our unit square into nine equal squares by straight
lines as shown in Figure 1.2. As there are ten points given inside the nine
small squares, Theorem 1.1 implies that there will be at least one small
square containing two of our ten points. The longest distance within a
square of side length 1/3 is that of two opposite
√ endpoints of a diagonal.
By the Pythagorean theorem, that distance is 32 < 0.48, so the first part
of the statement follows.
To prove the second statement, divide our square into four equal parts
by its two diagonals as shown in Figure 1.3. Theorem 1.4 then implies that
at least one of these triangles will contain three of our points. The proof
again follows as the radius of the circumcircle of these triangles is shorter
than 0.5.
July 28, 2016 17:25 ws-book9x6 A Walk Through Combinatorics book page 5
Example 1.6. During the last 1000 years, the reader had an ancestor A
such that there was a person P who was an ancestor of both the father and
the mother of A.
Grandparents
Parents
The reader
Fig. 1.4 The first few levels of the family tree of the reader.
The root of this tree is the reader herself. On the first level of the tree,
we see the two parents of the reader, on the second level we find her four
grandparents, and so on. Assume (for shortness) that one generation takes
25 years to produce offspring. That means that 1000 years was sufficient
time for 40 generations to grow up, yielding 1 + 2 + 22 + · · · + 240 = 241 − 1
nodes in the family tree. If any two nodes of this tree are associated to the
same person B, then we are done as B can play the role of P .
Now assume that no two nodes of the first 40 levels of the family tree
coincide. Then all the 241 − 1 nodes of the family tree must be distinct.
That would mean 241 − 1 distinct people, and that is a lot more than the
number of all people who have lived in our planet during the last 1000 years.
Indeed, the current population of our planet is less than 1010 , and was much
less at any earlier point of time. Therefore, the cumulative population of
the last 1000 years, or 40 generations, was less than 40 · 1010 < 241 − 1, and
the proof follows by contradiction.
July 28, 2016 17:25 ws-book9x6 A Walk Through Combinatorics book page 7
Example 1.7. Mr. and Mrs. Smith invited four couples to their home.
Some guests were friends of Mr. Smith, and some others were friends of Mrs.
Smith. When the guests arrived, people who knew each other beforehand
shook hands, those who did not know each other just greeted each other.
After all this took place, the observant Mr. Smith said “How interesting.
If you disregard me, there are no two people present who shook hands the
same number of times”.
How many times did Mrs. Smith shake hands?
Solution. The reader may well think that this question cannot be an-
swered from the given information any better than say, a question about
the age of the second cousin of Mr. Smith. However, using the Pigeon-
hole Principle and a very handy model called a graph, this question can be
answered.
To start, let us represent each person by a node, and let us write the
number of handshakes carried out by each person except Mr. Smith next to
the corresponding vertex. This way we must write down nine different non-
negative integers. All these integers must be smaller than nine as nobody
shook hands with himself/herself or his/her spouse. So the numbers we
wrote down are between 0 and 8, and since there are nine of them, we must
have written down each of the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 exactly once.
The diagram we have constructed so far can be seen in Figure 1.5.
Now let us join two nodes by a line if the corresponding two people
shook each other’s hands. Such a diagram is called a graph, the nodes are
called the vertices of the graph, and the lines are called the edges of the
graph. So our diagram will be a graph with ten vertices.
Let us denote the person with i handshakes by Yi . (Mr. Smith is not
assigned any additional notation.) Who can be the spouse of the person
Y8 ? We know that Y8 did not shake the hand of only one other person,
July 28, 2016 17:25 ws-book9x6 A Walk Through Combinatorics book page 8
8
Mr. Smith 7
6
0
5
1
4
2
so that person must have been his or her spouse. On the other hand, Y8
certainly did not shake the hand Y0 as nobody did that. Therefore, Y8 and
Y0 are married, and Y8 shook everyone’s hand except for Y0 . We represent
this by joining his vertex to all vertices other than Y0 . We also encircle Y8
and Y0 together, to express that they are married.
8
Mr. Smith 7
6
0
5
1
2 4
Now try to find the spouse of Y7 , the person with seven handshakes. This
person did not shake the hands of two people, one of whom was his/her
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ou d’épée, et cela l’égayait de se les imaginer, ainsi vêtus à
l’antique, dans l’autre monde, en train d’attendre l’arrivée de leurs
petits-neveux, et solennellement assis à droite ou à gauche du Père
Éternel…
« Et dire qu’ils croient encore à ça ! à une autre vie ! Cette
bêtise !… Des empaillés, quoi ! » Et elle riait tout haut. C’était un
bonheur pour elle, que personne n’entendît ce rire-là.
— Êtes-vous couchée, ma sœur Marie ? puis-je entrer ?
— Oui, ma mignonne.
— Pas couchée encore ! Que faisiez-vous donc ?
— Ma prière, petite Annette.
— Peste ! Mademoiselle, je ne suis pas si sage, et vous me faites
honte. J’ai tout de suite fini, moi, — et encore, les trois quarts du
temps, je la dis dans mon lit, ma prière. C’est très mal, n’est-ce pas ?
Un pater, un ave et ioup ! je ne peux pas m’empêcher de penser à
mille choses… Quant à ma prière du matin, par exemple, c’est
abominable : je l’oublie toujours. Je m’en confesse. Monsieur le curé
dit : « Comment pouvez-vous ne jamais oublier de l’oublier, et cela
tous les matins sans faute ? » — Oh ! Monsieur le curé, lui ai-je dit
une fois, je suis si pressée de revoir le soleil ! d’aller dehors, courir
dans le parc ! — Alors, vous ne devineriez jamais, ma sœur Marie,
ce qu’il m’a répondu ; il a dit : « De revoir le soleil… Ah ?… » Et puis,
après une minute de réflexion : « Ma foi, chère petite, le Bon Dieu
est si bon qu’il prend peut-être ça, de votre part, pour une manière
de prier… »
X
Toutes les pensées, toutes les joies, toutes les tristesses, tous
les désirs, tous les rêves, — tout cela proprement plié, sous
l’enveloppe mince des lettres, sous une effigie de roi ou de reine, et
bien et dûment timbré, tout cela glisse dans des trous béants aux
devantures des boutiques, puis court dans des wagons, s’en va, —
isolé des cœurs d’où cela est sorti, — sur les routes, par les
chemins, dans la boîte des facteurs toujours fatigués et toujours en
route… Tous ces petits carrés de papier, sans fin vont et viennent,
entre-croisant, sans les embrouiller, les milliers de fils de leur va-et-
vient, — la réponse appelant la réponse à travers l’espace… Tous
ces menus papiers, ce sont des cris qui s’échangent en silence…
Oh ! l’éloquente, la magique enseigne, qui, — dans les bourgades
perdues sous la neige des montagnes, au fond des vallées ignorées,
au bord des déserts d’Afrique, — donne au voyageur découragé une
soudaine émotion de fidélité et de retour, et comme un sentiment
joyeux d’ubiquité : Postes et Télégraphes.
« Chérie,
Berthe répondit :
Berthe.
Albert. »
Pauline. »
Annette répondit :
Annette.
Paul. »
Albert, en lisant ces lignes, se sentit pâlir. Il éprouva un
mouvement d’angoisse au fond de son cœur, mais son parti était si
bien pris, sa volonté si accoutumée à être la maîtresse ! Il envoya un
mot par câble sous-marin. Et ce mot, qui sortait des profondeurs les
plus douloureuses d’une âme d’homme, et dont il fut le seul à
connaître tout le sens, courut au fond des grandes eaux :
— « J’y serai. Merci. »
XII