We discuss a new direction in which the use of some methods from arithmetic combinatorics can be extended. We consider functions taking values in Euclidean space and supported on subsets of {1, 2, . . ., N}. In this context we present a proof of a natural generalization of Szemerédi's theorem. We also prove a similar generalization of a theorem of Sárkőzy using a vector-valued Fourier transform, adapting an argument of Green and obtaining effective bounds.

An n-vertex graph G is c-Ramsey if it contains neither a complete nor an empty induced subgraph of size greater than c log n. Erdős, Faudree and Sós conjectured that every c-Ramsey graph with n vertices contains Ω(n5/2) induced subgraphs, any two of which differ either in the number of vertices or in the number of edges, i.e., the number of distinct pairs (|V(H)|, |E(H)|), as H ranges over all induced subgraphs of G, is Ω(n5/2). We prove an Ω(n2.3693) lower bound.

This special issue is devoted to papers from the meeting on Combinatorics, Probability and Computing, held at the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut in Oberwolfach from 29 October 2006 to 4 November 2006. Like most conferences at Oberwolfach, this was an exciting and stimulating occasion; we were treated to numerous excellent talks, many of which provoked a great deal of interest and discussion among the participants.

This Special Issue of CPC is devoted to papers from the conference honouring the 65th birthday of Tom Trotter, held at the Georgia Institute of Technology, May 5–9 2008. The organizing committee consisted of Graham Brightwell, Dwight Duffus, Stefan Felsner, Hal Kierstead, Prasad Tetali, Robin Thomas, Peter Winkler and Xingxing Yu.

A collection of permutation classes is exhibited whose growth rates form a perfect set, thereby refuting some conjectures of Balogh, Bollobás and Morris.

For k prime and A a finite set of integers with |A| ≥ 3(k − 1)2(k − 1)! we prove that |A + k · A| ≥ (k + 1)|A| − ⌈k(k + 2)/4⌉ where k · A = {ka: a ∈ A}. We also describe the sets for which equality holds.

Let q be a power of a prime p, and let n, d, ℓ be integers such that 1 ≤ n, 1 ≤ ℓ < q. Consider the modulo q complete ℓ-wide family:

We describe a Gröbner basis of the vanishing ideal I() of the set of characteristic vectors of over fields of characteristic p. It turns out that this set of polynomials is a Gröbner basis for all term orderings ≺, for which the order of the variables is xn ≺ xn−1 ≺ ⋅⋅⋅ ≺ x1.

We compute the Hilbert function of I(), which yields formulae for the modulo p rank of certain inclusion matrices related to .

We apply our results to problems from extremal set theory. We prove a sharp upper bound of the cardinality of a modulo q ℓ-wide family, which shatters only small sets. This is closely related to a conjecture of Frankl [13] on certain ℓ-antichains. The formula of the Hilbert function also allows us to obtain an upper bound on the size of a set system with certain restricted intersections, generalizing a bound proposed by Babai and Frankl [6].

The paper generalizes and extends the results of [15], [16] and [17].

Ingo Wegener passed away on 26 November 2008, after a three-year struggle with brain cancer. This is a tremendous loss for all those who knew him and worked with him. Ingo is survived by his wife, Christa.

After studying Mathematics in Bielefeld and holding a post in Frankfurt am Main, in 1987 Ingo became a full professor of Computer Science, in Efficient Algorithms and Complexity Theory, at the Technische Universität Dortmund, a position he held until his death.

We perform the asymptotic enumeration of two classes of rooted maps on orientable surfaces: m-hypermaps and m-constellations. For m = 2 they correspond respectively to maps with even face degrees and bipartite maps. We obtain explicit asymptotic formulas for the number of such maps with any finite set of allowed face degrees.

Our proofs combine a bijective approach, generating series techniques related to lattice walks, and elementary algebraic graph theory.

A special case of our results implies former conjectures of Z. Gao.

Let m > 2 be an integer, let C2m denote the cycle of length 2m on the set of vertices [−m, m) = {−m, −m + 1, . . ., m − 2, m − 1}, and let G = G(m, d) denote the graph on the set of vertices [−m, m)d, in which two vertices are adjacent if and only if they are adjacent in C2m in one coordinate, and equal in all others. This graph can be viewed as the graph of the d-dimensional torus. We prove that one can delete a fraction of at most of the vertices of G so that no topologically non-trivial cycles remain. This is tight up to the logd factor and improves earlier estimates by various researchers.

We describe a lower bound for the rank of any real matrix in which all diagonal entries are significantly larger in absolute value than all other entries, and discuss several applications of this result to the study of problems in Geometry, Coding Theory, Extremal Finite Set Theory and Probability. This is partly a survey, containing a unified approach for proving various known results, but it contains several new results as well.

It is well known that, when normalized by n, the expected length of a longest common subsequence of d sequences of length n over an alphabet of size σ converges to a constant γσ,d. We disprove a speculation by Steele regarding a possible relation between γ2,d and γ2,2. In order to do that we also obtain some new lower bounds for γσ,d, when both σ and d are small integers.

Let 3 ≤ k < n/2. We prove the analogue of the Erdős–Ko–Rado theorem for the random k-uniform hypergraph Gk(n, p) when k < (n/2)1/3; that is, we show that with probability tending to 1 as n → ∞, the maximum size of an intersecting subfamily of Gk(n, p) is the size of a maximum trivial family. The analogue of the Erdős–Ko–Rado theorem does not hold for all p when k ≫ n1/3.

We give quite precise results for k < n1/2−ϵ. For larger k we show that the random Erdős–Ko–Rado theorem holds as long as p is not too small, and fails to hold for a wide range of smaller values of p. Along the way, we prove that every non-trivial intersecting k-uniform hypergraph can be covered by k2 − k + 1 pairs, which is sharp as evidenced by projective planes. This improves upon a result of Sanders [7]. Several open questions remain.

Belief propagation (BP) is a message-passing algorithm that computes the exact marginal distributions at every vertex of a graphical model without cycles. While BP is designed to work correctly on trees, it is routinely applied to general graphical models that may contain cycles, in which case neither convergence, nor correctness in the case of convergence is guaranteed. Nonetheless, BP has gained popularity as it seems to remain effective in many cases of interest, even when the underlying graph is ‘far’ from being a tree. However, the theoretical understanding of BP (and its new relative survey propagation) when applied to CSPs is poor.

Contributing to the rigorous understanding of BP, in this paper we relate the convergence of BP to spectral properties of the graph. This encompasses a result for random graphs with a ‘planted’ solution; thus, we obtain the first rigorous result on BP for graph colouring in the case of a complex graphical structure (as opposed to trees). In particular, the analysis shows how belief propagation breaks the symmetry between the 3! possible permutations of the colour classes.

Using various results from extremal set theory (interpreted in the language of additive combinatorics), we prove an asymptotically sharp version of Freiman's theorem in : if is a set for which |A + A| ≤ K|A| then A is contained in a subspace of size ; except for the error, this is best possible. If in addition we assume that A is a downset, then we can also cover A by O(K46) translates of a coordinate subspace of size at most |A|, thereby verifying the so-called polynomial Freiman–Ruzsa conjecture in this case. A common theme in the arguments is the use of compression techniques. These have long been familiar in extremal set theory, but have been used only rarely in the additive combinatorics literature.

In this work we determine the expected number of vertices of degree k = k(n) in a graph with n vertices that is drawn uniformly at random from a subcritical graph class. Examples of such classes are outerplanar, series-parallel, cactus and clique graphs. Moreover, we provide exponentially small bounds for the probability that the quantities in question deviate from their expected values.

A celebrated theorem of Friedgut says that every function f : {0, 1}n → {0, 1} can be approximated by a function g : {0, 1}n → {0, 1} with , which depends only on eO(If / ε) variables, where If is the sum of the influences of the variables of f. Dinur and Friedgut later showed that this statement also holds if we replace the discrete domain {0, 1}n with the continuous domain [0, 1]n, under the extra assumption that f is increasing. They conjectured that the condition of monotonicity is unnecessary and can be removed.

We show that certain constant-depth decision trees provide counter-examples to the Dinur–Friedgut conjecture. This suggests a reformulation of the conjecture in which the function g : [0, 1]n → {0, 1}, instead of depending on a small number of variables, has a decision tree of small depth. In fact we prove this reformulation by showing that the depth of the decision tree of g can be bounded by eO(If / ε2).

Furthermore, we consider a second notion of the influence of a variable, and study the functions that have bounded total influence in this sense. We use a theorem of Bourgain to show that these functions have certain properties. We also study the relation between the two different notions of influence.

Let G = G(n) be a randomly chosen k-edge-coloured k-regular graph with 2n vertices, where k = k(n). Such a graph can be obtained from a random set of k edge-disjoint perfect matchings of K2n. Let h = h(n) be a graph with m = m(n) edges such that m2 + mk = o(n). Using a switching argument, we find an asymptotic estimate of the expected number of subgraphs of G isomorphic to h. Isomorphisms may or may not respect the edge colouring, and other generalizations are also presented. Special attention is paid to matchings and cycles.

The results in this paper are essential to a forthcoming paper of McLeod in which an asymptotic estimate for the number of k-edge-coloured k-regular graphs for k = o(n5/6) is found.

In majority bootstrap percolation on a graph G, an infection spreads according to the following deterministic rule: if at least half of the neighbours of a vertex v are already infected, then v is also infected, and infected vertices remain infected forever. We say that percolation occurs if eventually every vertex is infected.

The elements of the set of initially infected vertices, A ⊂ V(G), are normally chosen independently at random, each with probability p, say. This process has been extensively studied on the sequence of torus graphs [n]d, for n = 1,2, . . ., where d = d(n) is either fixed or a very slowly growing function of n. For example, Cerf and Manzo [17] showed that the critical probability is o(1) if d(n) ≤ log*n, i.e., if p = p(n) is bounded away from zero then the probability of percolation on [n]d tends to one as n → ∞.

In this paper we study the case when the growth of d to ∞ is not excessively slow; in particular, we show that the critical probability is 1/2 + o(1) if d ≥ (log log n)2 log log log n, and give much stronger bounds in the case that G is the hypercube, [2]d.

We prove that there exists a constant c such that, for any integer Δ, the Ramsey number of a bipartite graph on n vertices with maximum degree Δ is less than 2cΔn. A probabilistic argument due to Graham, Rödl and Ruciński implies that this result is essentially sharp, up to the constant c in the exponent. Our proof hinges upon a quantitative form of a hypergraph packing result of Rödl, Ruciński and Taraz.