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Combinatorics Difficulty 5.9 AIME, harder Prove it

Example 1 In graph GG there are ee edges and nn vertices with degrees d1,d2,,dnd_{1}, d_{2}, \cdots, d_{n}, and integer kk is less than min{d1,d2,,dn}\min \left\{d_{1}, d_{2}, \cdots, d_{n}\right\}. Prove: Graph GG contains an induced subgraph HH (i.e., if two vertices in HH are connected by an edge in graph GG, then they are also connected by an edge in HH), such that HH does not contain Kk+1K_{k+1} (i.e., a complete graph with k+1k+1 vertices where every pair of vertices is connected by an edge), and HH has at least kn22e+n\frac{k n^{2}}{2 e+n} vertices.
(Adapted from a 2010 USA MOP program problem)

Solution

【Analysis】Similar to Example 9 in [1], the proof method for Turán's theorem uses a random permutation of vertices. To ensure no complete graph Kk+1K_{k+1} appears, it is sufficient to require that the degree of each vertex in graph HH does not exceed k1k-1. For a random permutation of vertices v1,v2,,vnv_{1}, v_{2}, \cdots, v_{n}, using a greedy algorithm, select viv_{i} if and only if, in the permutation of viv_{i} and its adjacent vertices, viv_{i} is among the first kk positions. This ensures that the degrees of the selected vertices do not exceed kk, and thus, the final graph contains no Kk+1K_{k+1}. Next, we prove that the expected number of selected vertices is at least kn22e+n\frac{k n^{2}}{2 e+n}.

Let XiX_{i} be the random variable indicating whether the ii-th vertex is selected in a random permutation, taking the value 1 if selected and 0 otherwise.

Notice that, in the permutation of viv_{i} and its adjacent vertices, viv_{i} will be selected if it is among the first kk positions. Thus,
E(Xi)=1P(Xi=1)+0P(Xi=0)=kdi+1. \begin{array}{l} \mathrm{E}\left(X_{i}\right)=1 \cdot P\left(X_{i}=1\right)+0 \cdot P\left(X_{i}=0\right) \\ =\frac{k}{d_{i}+1} . \end{array}

Let the random variable XX represent the number of vertices that can be selected according to the required algorithm in a random permutation, then
X=X1+X2++XnE(X)=i=1nE(Xi)=i=1nkdi+1. \begin{array}{l} X=X_{1}+X_{2}+\cdots+X_{n} \\ \Rightarrow \mathrm{E}(X)=\sum_{i=1}^{n} \mathrm{E}\left(X_{i}\right)=\sum_{i=1}^{n} \frac{k}{d_{i}+1} . \end{array}

By the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, we have
E(X)=kn2i=1n(di+1)=kn22e+n \mathrm{E}(X)=\frac{k n^{2}}{\sum_{i=1}^{n}\left(d_{i}+1\right)}=\frac{k n^{2}}{2 e+n} \text {. }

Therefore, there must exist a permutation such that the number of selected vertices is at least kn22e+n\frac{k n^{2}}{2 e+n}.
This completes the proof.

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Source: NuminaMath-1.5, licensed Apache-2.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.