Graph Theory - 0366.3267

Noga Alon and Michael Krivelevich (nogaa@tau.ac.il, krivelev@tau.ac.il )
Fall 2011-2012, Wednesday 15-18, Orenstein 111.
School of Mathematical Sciences,
Tel-Aviv University

Procedural Matters:

Prerequisite Courses: Discrete Mathematics or Introduction to Combinatorics and Graph Theory, Linear Algebra, Introduction to Probability.
Exercises will be given during the course and will account for 10% of the final grade. There will also be a final exam.

Text books:

Most of the topics covered in the course appear in the books listed below (especially the first three).
Graph Theory, by J. A. Bondy and U. S. R. Murty, Springer, 2008.
Introduction to Graph Theory, by D. B. West, Prentice Hall, 1996.
Graph Theory, by R. Diestel, Springer, 1997.
The Probabilistic Method, third edition, by N. Alon and J. H. Spencer, Wiley, 2008.

Brief syllabus:

Graphs and subgraphs, trees, connectivity, Euler tours, Hamilton cycles, matchings, Hall's Theorem and Tutte's Theorem, edge coloring and Vizing's Theorem, independent sets, Turan's Theorem and Ramsey's Theorem, vertex coloring, planar graphs, directed graphs, probabilistic methods and linear algebra tools in Graph Theory.

More relevant information, including a more detailed syllabus and some exams from previous years, appear in: Graph Theory

Course Outline (preliminary: to be updated during the term):

  1. Nov 2:
    Graphs and subgraphs, bipartite graphs, connected components, degrees and applications
  2. Nov 9:
    Sperner's Lemma and Brouwer's fixed point theorem, trees, Cayley's formula
  3. Nov 16:
    The matrix tree theorem
  4. Nov 23:
    Connectivity, Mader's Theorem, Menger's Theorem
  5. Nov 30:
    More on Menger's Theorem, Eulerian cycles, Hamilton cycles
  6. Dec 7:
    Dirac's Theorem, Chvatal-Erdos' Theorem, matchings, Hall's Theorem
  7. Dec 14:
    Theorems of Konig, Tutte, Petersen
  8. Dec 21:
    Edge coloring, Vizing's Theorem
  9. Dec 28:
    Cliques and Independent sets, Ramsey's Theorem, Schur's Theorem
  10. Jan. 4:
    Turan's Theorem, Vertex coloring, Brooks' Theorem
  11. Jan. 11:
    More on Brooks' Theorem, Graphs with high girth and high chromatic number
  12. Jan. 18:
    Planar graphs, Euler's formula, duals, comments on Kuratowski's Theorem, and on the Four Colors Theorem
  13. Jan. 25:
    Tools from Linear Algebra
  14. Feb. 1:
    Solution of exercises, Concluding remarks

Exercises

List of Theorems

The site of Shlomi Rubinstein contains several previous exams and solutions to some of the questions in them.