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Enumerative combinatorics, graph theory, order theory, posets, matroids, designs and other discrete structures. It also includes algebraic, analytic and probabilistic combinatorics.

14 votes
1 answer
560 views

Is there an elementary proof of a better result for the finite guessing-box puzzle?

The infinitary guessing-box puzzle is amazing — see here. In the basic form, the Guessing-box Hall has infinitely many wooden boxes, each containing a real number, and there are 100 mathematicians wh …
14 votes

Size of maximal intersecting families

The answer is yes. Consider first for simplicity the case where $X$ is countably infinite. If $\mathcal{S}$ is a maximal intersecting family, then I claim that $\mathcal{S}$ must contain a set with in …
Joel David Hamkins's user avatar
9 votes
Accepted

Elementary submodels in partitions theorems

Complementing Andres's excellent answer, let me simply try to help build your intuition for elementary submodels. The basic situation is just like the familiar fact that if you have finitely many grou …
Joel David Hamkins's user avatar
6 votes
Accepted

Is every finite poset a subset of a finite complemented distributive lattice?

As Sam mentioned in the comments, the answer to question 1 is yes. One can map every condition $p$ in the partial order to the lower cone, the set $S_p=\{q\in P\mid q\leq p\}$ of conditions below $p$. …
Joel David Hamkins's user avatar
2 votes
Accepted

Can $\omega$ be parity-separated with finitely many bijections?

No, because if you have $n$ functions, then the number of possible parity patterns to be exhibited by a number with respect to them is $2^n$. So by the pigeon-hole principle there must be infinitely m …
Joel David Hamkins's user avatar
8 votes

Seymour's second neighborhood conjecture for infinite graphs

Allow me to make an observation concerning what I find to be an interesting angle on the question in the context without the axiom of choice, where there are competing conceptions of what it means to …
Joel David Hamkins's user avatar
39 votes

True by accident (and therefore not amenable to proof)

Apart from your specific example, the idea of truth-by-accident has been studied in the context of formal first-order languages, which includes the language of graph theory, and in his dissertation, K …
მამუკა ჯიბლაძე's user avatar
47 votes
7 answers
5k views

Is it easy to produce hard-to-color graphs?

This question arises from my recent visit to my daughter's second-grade class, where I led some discussion and activities on graph coloring (see Math for seven-year-olds). In one such activity, each c …
9 votes
3 answers
1k views

The Sudoku game: Solver-Spoiler variation

Consider the Sudoku Solver-Spoiler game, a natural variation of the Sudoku game recently appearing in the question Who wins two-player Sudoku? posted by user PyRulez. In that game, the players attempt …
9 votes

Sunflowers in maximal almost disjoint families

It is consistent with ZFC that the answer to your question is no. Specifically, I claim, if we assume the continuum hypothesis, then the answer is no, not even for sunflowers of size $n=3$. Theorem. A …
Joel David Hamkins's user avatar
41 votes
3 answers
2k views

What is the minimal size of a partial order that is universal for all partial orders of size n?

A partial order $\mathbb{B}$ is universal for a class $\cal{P}$ of partial orders if every order in $\cal{P}$ embeds order-preservingly into $\mathbb{B}$. For example, every partial order $\langle\ma …
3 votes

Combinatorially defined effectively closed set

The answer is yes. Let me first describe a general method. Fix any c.e. computably inseparable pair $A$ and $B$. These are computably enumerable sets having no computable separation. There are diver …
Joel David Hamkins's user avatar
3 votes
Accepted

Is following function a metric on the set of isomorphism classes of graphs with countably ma...

To prove that this is a metric, consider the following theorem. Theorem. If the second player can survive for $n$ steps in the $(\Gamma_1,\Gamma_2)$ game, and for $m$ steps in the $(\Gamma_2,\Gamma_3 …
Joel David Hamkins's user avatar
75 votes
11 answers
27k views

Does War have infinite expected length?

My question concerns the (completely deterministic) card game known as War, played by seven-year-olds everywhere, such as my son Horatio, and sometimes also by others, such as their fathers. The ques …
2 votes

Infima and suprema in the "transfer" function ordering

Here is a counterexample showing that the quotient of $\text{Fct}(X,Y)$ is not necessarily a lattice. Let $X=\{0,1,2\}$ and let $Y=\{0,1\}$. Let $g(0)=g(1)=0$ and $g(2)=1$, while $f(0)=0$ and $f(1)=f …
Joel David Hamkins's user avatar

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