Graphs, Friends and Acquaintances

As is well known, a graph is a mathematical object modeling the existence of a certain relation between pairs of elements of a given set. Therefore, it is not surprising that many of the first results concerning graphs made reference to relationships between people or groups of people. In this artic...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Dalfó Simó, Cristina|||0000-0002-8438-9353, Fiol Mora, Miquel Àngel|||0000-0003-1337-4952
Formato: informe técnico
Fecha de publicación:2010
País:España
Recursos:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/7159
Acesso em linha:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/7159
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palavra-chave:Graph algorithms
Graph theory
Algebra, Boolean
Graph
Edge-coloring
Boolean Algebra
Ramsey Theory
Distance-regularity
Spectral Graph Theory
Completely Regular Code
Hall¿s Marriage Theorem
Menger¿s Theorem
Grafs, Teoria de
Àlgebra booleana
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Matemàtiques i estadística::Matemàtica discreta::Teoria de grafs
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Matemàtiques i estadística::Àlgebra
Descrição
Resumo:As is well known, a graph is a mathematical object modeling the existence of a certain relation between pairs of elements of a given set. Therefore, it is not surprising that many of the first results concerning graphs made reference to relationships between people or groups of people. In this article, we comment on four results of this kind, which are related to various general theories on graphs and their applications: the Handshake lemma (related to graph colorings and Boolean algebra), a lemma on known and unknown people at a cocktail party (to Ramsey theory), a theorem on friends in common (to distanceregularity and coding theory), and Hall’s Marriage theorem (to the theory of networks). These four areas of graph theory, often with problems which are easy to state but difficult to solve, are extensively developed and currently give rise to much research work. As examples of representative problems and results of these areas, which are discussed in this paper, we may cite the following: the Four Colors Theorem (4CTC), the Ramsey numbers, problems of the existence of distance-regular graphs and completely regular codes, and finally the study of topological proprieties of interconnection networks.