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Harrison Brown
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Obviously, graph invariants are wonderful things, but the usual ones (the Tutte polynomial, the spectrum, whatever) can't always distinguish between nonisomorphic graphs. Actually, I think that even a combination of the two I listed will fail to distinguish between two random trees of the same size with high probability.

Is there a known set of graph invariants that does always distinguish between non-isomorphic graphs? To rule out trivial examples, I'll require that the problem of comparing two such invariants is in P (or at the very least, not obviously equivalent to graph isomorphism) -- so, for instance, "the adjacency matrix" is not a good answer. (Computing the invariants is allowed to be hard, though.)

If this is (as I sort of suspect) in fact open, does anyone have any insight on why it should be hard? Such a set of invariants wouldn't require or violate any widely-believed complexity-theoretic conjectures, and actually there are complexity-theoretic reasons to think that something like it exists (specifically, under derandomization, graph isomorphism is in co-NP). It seems like it shouldn't be all that hard...

Edit: Thorny's comment raises a good point. Yes, there is trivially a complete graph invariant, which is defined by associating a unique integer (or polynomial, or labeled graph...) to every isomorphism class of graphs. Since there are a countable number of finite graphs, we can do this, and we have our invariant.

This is logically correct but not very satisfying; it works for distinguishing between finite groups, say, or between finite hypergraphs or whatever. So it doesn't actually tell us anything at all about graph theory. I'm not sure if I can rigorously define the notion of a "satisfying graph invariant," but here's a start: it has to be natural, in the sense that the computation/definition doesn't rely on arbitrarily choosing an element of a finite set. This disqualifies Thorny's solution, and I think it disqualifies Mariano's, although I could be wrong.

Obviously, graph invariants are wonderful things, but the usual ones (the Tutte polynomial, the spectrum, whatever) can't always distinguish between nonisomorphic graphs. Actually, I think that even a combination of the two I listed will fail to distinguish between two random trees of the same size with high probability.

Is there a known set of graph invariants that does always distinguish between non-isomorphic graphs? To rule out trivial examples, I'll require that the problem of comparing two such invariants is in P (or at the very least, not obviously equivalent to graph isomorphism) -- so, for instance, "the adjacency matrix" is not a good answer. (Computing the invariants is allowed to be hard, though.)

If this is (as I sort of suspect) in fact open, does anyone have any insight on why it should be hard? Such a set of invariants wouldn't require or violate any widely-believed complexity-theoretic conjectures, and actually there are complexity-theoretic reasons to think that something like it exists (specifically, under derandomization, graph isomorphism is in co-NP). It seems like it shouldn't be all that hard...

Obviously, graph invariants are wonderful things, but the usual ones (the Tutte polynomial, the spectrum, whatever) can't always distinguish between nonisomorphic graphs. Actually, I think that even a combination of the two I listed will fail to distinguish between two random trees of the same size with high probability.

Is there a known set of graph invariants that does always distinguish between non-isomorphic graphs? To rule out trivial examples, I'll require that the problem of comparing two such invariants is in P (or at the very least, not obviously equivalent to graph isomorphism) -- so, for instance, "the adjacency matrix" is not a good answer. (Computing the invariants is allowed to be hard, though.)

If this is (as I sort of suspect) in fact open, does anyone have any insight on why it should be hard? Such a set of invariants wouldn't require or violate any widely-believed complexity-theoretic conjectures, and actually there are complexity-theoretic reasons to think that something like it exists (specifically, under derandomization, graph isomorphism is in co-NP). It seems like it shouldn't be all that hard...

Edit: Thorny's comment raises a good point. Yes, there is trivially a complete graph invariant, which is defined by associating a unique integer (or polynomial, or labeled graph...) to every isomorphism class of graphs. Since there are a countable number of finite graphs, we can do this, and we have our invariant.

This is logically correct but not very satisfying; it works for distinguishing between finite groups, say, or between finite hypergraphs or whatever. So it doesn't actually tell us anything at all about graph theory. I'm not sure if I can rigorously define the notion of a "satisfying graph invariant," but here's a start: it has to be natural, in the sense that the computation/definition doesn't rely on arbitrarily choosing an element of a finite set. This disqualifies Thorny's solution, and I think it disqualifies Mariano's, although I could be wrong.

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Harrison Brown
  • 12.6k
  • 14
  • 70
  • 105

Obviously, graph invariants are wonderful things, but the usual ones (the Tutte polynomial, the spectrum, whatever) can't always distinguish between nonisomorphic graphs. Actually, I think that even a combination of the two I listed will fail to distinguish between two random trees of the same size with high probability.

Is there a known set of graph invariants that does always distinguish between non-isomorphic graphs? To rule out trivial examples, I'll require that the problem of comparing two such invariants is in P (or at the very least, not obviously equivalent to graph isomorphism) -- so, for instance, "the adjacency matrix" is not a good answer. (Computing the invariants is allowed to be hard, though.)

If this is (as I sort of suspect) in fact open, does anyone have any insight on why it should be hard? Such a set of invariants wouldn't require or violate any widely-believed complexity-theoretic conjectures, and actually there are complexity-theoretic reasons to think that something like it exists (specifically, under derandomization, graph isomorphism is in co-NP). It seems like it shouldn't be all that hard...

Obviously, graph invariants are wonderful things, but the usual ones (the Tutte polynomial, the spectrum, whatever) can't always distinguish between nonisomorphic graphs. Actually, I think that even a combination of the two I listed will fail to distinguish between two random trees of the same size with high probability.

Is there a known set of graph invariants that does always distinguish between non-isomorphic graphs? To rule out trivial examples, I'll require that the problem of comparing two such invariants is in P (or at the very least, not obviously equivalent to graph isomorphism) -- so, for instance, "the adjacency matrix" is not a good answer. (Computing the invariants is allowed to be hard, though.)

Obviously, graph invariants are wonderful things, but the usual ones (the Tutte polynomial, the spectrum, whatever) can't always distinguish between nonisomorphic graphs. Actually, I think that even a combination of the two I listed will fail to distinguish between two random trees of the same size with high probability.

Is there a known set of graph invariants that does always distinguish between non-isomorphic graphs? To rule out trivial examples, I'll require that the problem of comparing two such invariants is in P (or at the very least, not obviously equivalent to graph isomorphism) -- so, for instance, "the adjacency matrix" is not a good answer. (Computing the invariants is allowed to be hard, though.)

If this is (as I sort of suspect) in fact open, does anyone have any insight on why it should be hard? Such a set of invariants wouldn't require or violate any widely-believed complexity-theoretic conjectures, and actually there are complexity-theoretic reasons to think that something like it exists (specifically, under derandomization, graph isomorphism is in co-NP). It seems like it shouldn't be all that hard...

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Harrison Brown
  • 12.6k
  • 14
  • 70
  • 105

Complete graph invariants?

Obviously, graph invariants are wonderful things, but the usual ones (the Tutte polynomial, the spectrum, whatever) can't always distinguish between nonisomorphic graphs. Actually, I think that even a combination of the two I listed will fail to distinguish between two random trees of the same size with high probability.

Is there a known set of graph invariants that does always distinguish between non-isomorphic graphs? To rule out trivial examples, I'll require that the problem of comparing two such invariants is in P (or at the very least, not obviously equivalent to graph isomorphism) -- so, for instance, "the adjacency matrix" is not a good answer. (Computing the invariants is allowed to be hard, though.)