Friday 4 April 2025 - Francesco Di Braccio (LSE)
The Zarankiewicz problem on tripartite graphs
In 1975, Bollobás, Erdős, and Szemerédi asked for the smallest \(\tau\) such that a tripartite graph with \(n\) vertices in each part and minimum degree at least \(n + \tau\) must contain \(K_{t, t, t}\), conjecturing that \(\tau = O(n^{1/2})\) for \(t = 2\). In this talk, I will discuss our proof that \(\tau = O(n^{1 - 1/t})\), which confirms their conjecture and is best possible for all \(t \geq 2\) assuming the widely believed conjecture that \(\mathrm{ex}(n, K_{t, t}) = \Theta(n^{2 - 1/t})\). I will also present our construction of an infinite family of extremal graphs that are pairwise far apart (requiring the change of \(\Omega(n^2)\) edges to get between any two).
This is joint work with Freddie Illingworth.
Thursday 3 April 2025 - John Sylvester (Liverpool)
Adjacency Labeling Schemes for Small Classes
An adjacency labeling scheme for a class of graphs\(\mathcal{C}\) defines, for any \(n\text{-vertex } G \in \mathcal{C}\), an assignment of labels to each vertex in \(G\) so that adjacency in \(G\) is determined by a (fixed) function of the two labels of the endpoints. The _size_ of a labeling scheme is the bit length of the longest label, which we want as small as possible. If \(|\mathcal{C}_n|\) denotes the number of \(n\text{-vertex graphs in }\mathcal{C}\), then any adjacency labeling scheme has size at least \(\log|C_n|)/n\).
For many classes (e.g. planar, bounded twin-width, bounded degeneracy) this lower bound is tight up to a constant. In 1988 the Implicit Graph Conjecture (IGC) postulated that any _hereditary_ (closed under induced subgraphs) class \(\mathcal{C}\) with \(\|\mathcal{C}_n|=2^{O(n\log n)}\) admits a labeling scheme of size \(\Theta(\log n)\), matching the lower bound. Hatami and Hatami recently disproved this, using the probabilistic method to construct a hereditary factorial class requiring almost \(\sqrt{n}\) size labels.
We begin with a more gentle introduction to labeling schemes, before outlining what we think to be the correct reformulation of the IGC: any hereditary class \(\mathcal{C}\) with \(|\mathcal{C}_n|=n!\,2^{O(n)}\) admits a labeling scheme of size \(\Theta(\log n)\). We prove this under the additional restriction that the class is _weakly sparse_ (excludes some fixed bipartite complete graph as a subgraph). We also prove that the conjecture holds if one relaxes the size bound to \(O(\log^3 n)\), improving on the previously best-known upper bound of \(n^{1-\Omega(1)}\).
This is joint work with Édouard Bonnet, Julien Duron, Viktor Zamaraev and Maksim Zhukovskii.
Friday 28 March 2025 - Mihir Neve (LSE)
Robustness of the Sauer–Spencer Theorem
A robustness result typically examines how strongly an extremal theorem holds. More precisely, given a graph \(G\) and \(p \in [0, 1]\), we define \(G(p)\) to be the random subgraph of \(G\) generated by retaining each edge of \(G\) independently with probability \(p\). Suppose the graph \(G\) satisfies some property \(\Pi\). Then, this property \(\Pi\) is said to hold robustly for \(G\) if, for some \(p < 1\), the random subgraph \(G(p)\) also has the property \(\Pi\) with high probability. We prove such a robustness result for an old and well-known graph embedding theorem of Sauer and Spencer. The Sauer--Spencer theorem gives a minimum degree condition on the host graph \(G\) that enforces \(G\) to contain any spanning subgraph of a bounded constant maximum degree \(\Delta\). In this talk, I plan to sketch some key ideas that were used to prove our robustness result. One of our main tools is a vertex-spread version of the blow-up lemma of Allen, Böttcher, Hàn, Kohayakawa, and Person.
This is a joint work with Peter Allen, Julia Böttcher, and Yoshiharu Kohayakawa.
Thursday 27 March 2025 - Dario Paccagnan (Imperial)
Bridging Nash equilibria and Security Strategies via Optimal Transport
In many game-theoretic settings, agents are challenged with taking decisions against the uncertain behavior exhibited by others. Often, this uncertainty arises from multiple sources, e.g., incomplete information, limited computation, bounded rationality. While it may be possible to guide the agents’ decisions by modeling each source, their joint presence makes this task particularly daunting. Toward this goal, it is natural for agents to seek protection against deviations around the emergent behavior itself, which is ultimately impacted by all the above sources of uncertainty. To do so, we propose that each agent takes decisions in face of the worst-case behavior contained in an ambiguity set of tunable size, centered at the emergent behavior so implicitly defined. This gives rise to a novel equilibrium notion, which we call strategically robust equilibrium. Building on its definition we show that, when judiciously operationalized via optimal transport, strategically robust equilibria (i) interpolate between Nash and security strategies; (ii) come at no additional computational cost compared to Nash equilibria; (iii) often lead to better decisions and higher payoffs. Through a variety of experiments including bi-matrix games, congestion games, and Cournot competition, we show that strategic robustness protects against uncertainty in the opponents’ behavior and, surprisingly, results in higher equilibrium payoffs for all players – an effect we refer to as coordination via robustification.
Friday 21 March 2025 - Anand Rao Tadipatri (Cambridge)
Formal proofs and generalization
It has been known for over a century that it is possible to formally encode mathematical proofs in a logical foundation in principle. Softwares known as interactive theorem provers or proof assistants now make this possible in practice.
This talk will begin with an introduction to interactive theorem provers and their capabilities, with examples primarily drawn from the Lean theorem prover.
Later on in the talk, I will mention some possibilities that interactive theorem provers enable beyond proof verification, with a particular focus on proof generalization.
Specifically, I will present an algorithm that takes in a mathematical theorem with its proof (like the proof of irrationality of √2), along with a constant to generalize (such as 2), and produces a more general theorem (that √p is irrational for any prime p) by determining the specific properties of the constant that were used in the proof and generalizing them.
I will conclude with some speculations about how such tools may be incorporated into the workflow of research mathematicians.
Thursday 20 March 2025 - Alex Black (ETH)
Shadows of Polytopes
Linear optimization corresponds to finding the highest point in a direction on a polytope. This is sufficient for when is only interested in optimizing a single objective. For multiple objectives as appears in parametric, multicriteria, and low rank convex optimization, the problem requires a new geometric interpretation. Namely, one looks at all candidate solutions in the linear span of a set of linear objectives, and these solutions correspond to the vertices of a projection of a polytope. Furthermore, the run-time of optimization algorithms for these problems is, up to small polynomial factors, at most the number of vertices of the projection. In this talk, I will survey results regarding estimating the number of vertices of two-dimensional projections of polytopes in various settings and discuss related open problems.
Thursday 13 March 2025 - Panos Giannopoulos (City, University of London)
Searching in \(\mathbb{R}^d\) with predictions
Searching for a target positioned at some unknown location in some region is a classic search game problem that has been well-studied in both fields of Computational Geometry and Operations Research. In this talk, we will consider the problem of searching for a target point in \(\mathbb{R}^d\) when additional information regarding the position of the target is available in the form of \(c\)-predictions -- approximate distances to the target \(t\): for each point \(p\) that the searcher visits, a value \(\lambda(p)\) is obtained such that \(|pt| \leq \lambda(p) \leq c |pt|\), according to some unknown function \(\lambda\) and where \(c\) is a fixed (possibly unknown) constant.
I will show some simple search strategies that achieve constant competitive ratio (i.e., length of the path produced over the Euclidean distance of the target from the origin) as a function of \(c\) and \(d\). The strategies use metric \(\epsilon\)-nets and simple exponential search and work even if \(c\) is unknown.
We will also see a lower bound of the competitive ratio of any deterministic search strategy in \(\mathbb{R}^d\) with \(c\)-predictions. This bound uses again \(\epsilon\)-nets and some techniques for Euclidean TSP with Neighbourhoods.
Wednesday 12 March 2025 - Domagoj Bradač (ETH Zürich)
Unique subgraphs are rare
A folklore result attributed to Pólya states that there are \(1 + o(1))2^{\binom{n}{2}}/n!\) non-isomorphic graphs on \(n\) vertices. Given two graphs \(G\) and \(H\), we say that \(G\) is a unique subgraph of \(H\) if \(H\) contains exactly one subgraph isomorphic to \(G\). For an \(n-\)-vertex graph \(H\) , let \(f(H)\) be the number of non-isomorphic unique subgraphs of \(H\) divided by \(2^{\binom{n}{2}}/n!\) and let \(f(n)\) denote the maximum of \(f(H)\) over all graphs \(H\) on \(n\) vertices. In 1975, Erdős asked whether there exists \(\delta>0\) such that \(f(n)>\delta\) for all \(n\) and offered \(\$100\) for a proof and \(\$25\) for a disproof, indicating he does not believe this to be true. We verify Erd\H{o}s' intuition by showing that \(f(n)\rightarrow 0\) as \(n\) tends to infinity, i.e. no graph on \(n\) vertices contains a constant proportion of all graphs on \(n\) vertices as unique subgraphs.
Friday 7 March 2025 - Jasmin Katz (LSE)
A minimum degree condition for monochromatic trees in 2-edge coloured graphs
For any integer \(n\), it is easy to find a 2-edge colouring of the complete graph on \(2n-2\) vertices which doesn’t contain a monochromatic copy of every tree on \(n\) vertices. However, the ErdÅ‘s-Sós conjecture implies that for \(N = 2n-1\), any 2-edge colouring of \(K_N\) contains a monochromatic copy of every tree on \(n\) vertices. We show that any 2-edge coloured graph on \(N = 2n-1\) vertices with minimum degree at least \(3N/4\) contains a monochromatic copy of every bounded-degree tree on \(n\) vertices.
This is a joint work with Matías Pavez-Signé and Jozef Skokan.
Thursday 6 March 2025 - Yehuda "John" Levy (University of Glasgow)
Small Player Robustness
We introduce a concept of stability of a Nash equilibrium, or of a set of Nash equilibria, to the addition of small players, i.e., players who only have a small effect on the original players. We coin this concept `small player robustness' or `uniform small player robustness', depending on the specific condition required. We show that either of these conditions is equivalent to the essentiality condition of Govindan and Wilson (2005). Our techniques draw heavily on tools from semialgebraic geometry, as well as on previously developed game-theoretical tools.
Friday 28 February 2025 -Olha Silina (Carnegie Mellon University)
Strongly connected orientations and integer lattices
Let \(D=(V,A)\) be a digraph whose underlying graph is 2-edge-connected, and let P be the polytope whose vertices are the incidence vectors of arc sets whose reversal makes D strongly connected.
We study the lattice theoretic properties of the integer points contained in a proper face F of P not contained in \({x:x_a=i}\) for any \(a∈A, i∈{0,1}\). We prove under a mild necessary condition that \(F∩{0,1}^A\) contains an integral basis B, i.e., B is linearly independent, and any integral vector in the linear hull of F is an integral linear combination of B.
In proving the result, we develop a theory similar to Matching Theory for degree-constrained dijoins in bipartite digraphs. Our result has consequences for head-disjoint strong orientations in hypergraphs, and also to a famous conjecture by Woodall that the minimum size of a dicut of D, say τ, is equal to the maximum number of disjoint dijoins.
This is a joint work with Ahmad Abdi, Gerard Cornuejols, and Siyue Liu.
Thursday 27 February 2025 - Yelena Yuditsky (Université libre de Bruxelles)
Integer programs with nearly totally unimodular matrices: the cographic case
It is a notorious open question whether integer programs (IPs), with an integer coefficient matrix M whose subdeterminants are all bounded by a constant in absolute value, can be solved in polynomial time. We answer this question in the affirmative if we further require that, by removing a constant number of rows and columns from M, one obtains the transpose of a network matrix. We achieve our result in two main steps, the first related to the theory of IPs and the second related to graph minor theory. In this talk, I will present the ideas behind some of the results we obtain in either of those steps.
This is a joint work with M. Aprile, S. Fiorini, G. Joret, S. Kober, M.T. Seweryn and S. Weltge.
Friday 21 February 2025 -Zahra Parsaeian (Freiburg)
Laminar Matroid Secretary: Greedy Strikes Back
We show that a simple greedy algorithm is 4.75-competitive for the Laminar Matroid Secretary Problem, improving the \( 33 \approx 5.1963\sqrt{3} \approx 5.19633 \approx 5.196-\) competitive algorithm based on the forbidden sets technique (Soto, Turkieltaub, and Verdugo, 2018).
Thursday 20 February 2025 - Linda Cook (University of Amsterdam)
200,000 colors suffice (for t-perfect graphs)
Perfect graphs can be described as the graphs whose stable set polytopes are defined by their non-negativity and clique inequalities. In 1975, V. Chvátal defined an analogous class called t-perfect graphs, which are the graphs whose stable set polytopes are defined by their non-negativity, edge inequalities, and odd circuit inequalities. We show that t-perfect graphs are 200,000-colourable. This is the first finite bound on the chromatic number of t-perfect graphs, and answers a question of B. Shepherd from 1995.
This bound is probably not tight; M. Laurent and P. Seymour gave an example of a t-perfect graph requiring four colors in the 1990's and it is open whether all t-perfect graphs are 4-colorable. Our proof is mainly graph theoretic.
Joint work with: Maria Chudnovsky (Princeton), James Davies (Cambridge), Sang-il Oum (IBS DIMAG), Jane Tan (Oxford). Available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.17735
Friday 14 February 2025 - Kyriakos Katsamaktsis (UCL)
Ascending subgraph decomposition
We prove for large graphs the following conjecture of Alavi, Boals Chartrand, Erdős and Oellermann from 1987: any graph with \((m+1)m/2\) edges can be decomposed into graphs \(G_1,...,G_m\) such that \(G_i\) has exactly i edges and is isomorphic to a subgraph of \(G_{i+1}\). This is joint work with Shoham Letzter, Alexey Pokrovskiy and Benny Sudakov.
Thursday 13 February 2025 - Leo Versteegen (LSE)
An exploration of the balance game
The balance game is played on a graph G by two players, Admirable (A) and Impish (I), who take turns claiming vertices of G. The game ends once all vertices have been claimed, at which point the ‘score’ is computed as the number of edges whose incident vertices have been claimed by different players minus the number of edges whose incident vertices have been claimed by the same player. The goal of (A) is to minimize this quantity while (I) attempts to maximize it. Let \(b^A(G)\) be the score of a game in which (A) made the first move, and both players played optimally. We will establish general bounds on \(b^A(G)\) as well as discuss the behaviour of \(b^A(G)\) for specific classes for graphs such as paths and random graphs.
Based on joint work with Paul Dorbec, Michael Henning, and Zsolt Tuza.
Friday 7 February 2025 - Lawrence Hollom (Cambridge)
Double-jump phase transitions for the reverse Littlewood-Offord problem
An old conjecture of Erdős asks, given n unit vectors in dimension d, for a lower bound on the probability that a random signed sum of these unit vectors (taken uniformly at random from the \(2^n\) possibilities) lies close to the origin. This conjecture has been corrected, solved, rediscovered and generalised over the years, and so it might appear that there is little more to say about it. However, in this talk we discuss adding a parity condition to n, a condition which both adds significant depth to the setting and gives new life to Erdős's original conjecture, giving rise to a wealth of interesting results and wide-open problems. We will also say a few words about optimal constructions in the original setting of Erdős, about which much also remains mysterious
Thursday 6 February 2025 - Matthias Englert (Warwick)
Exploiting gradient flow convergence properties to reconstruct training data from neural networks
There can be many different weights, all of which result in a network that correctly classifies the training data. An important question is to understand the implicit bias of gradient flow (that is, gradient descent with an infinitesimally small step size), i.e. which of these solutions the gradient flow will converge to. Work by Lyu and Li [ICLR 2020] and Ji and Telgarsky [NeurIPS 2020] shows that, under certain conditions, when optimising the binary cross-entropy loss of a homogeneous neural network using gradient flow, the direction of the network weights converges to a Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) point of the maximum margin problem.
Haim et al. [NeurIPS 2022] exploit this implicit bias of gradient flow to reconstruct part of the training data from the network weights of the final trained network.
We will briefly discuss this theoretical background of the implicit bias of gradient flow and how it was used by Haim et al. to experimentally reconstruct part of the training data. Finally, we will show how diffusion models can be used to improve the quality of the reconstructions obtained by Haim et al.
(joint work with Ranko Lazic and Avi Semler)
Friday 31 January 2025 - Tamás Schwarcz (LSE)
Problems on group-labeled matroid bases
Several combinatorial optimization problems involve additional constraints, such as parity, congruency, and exact-weight constraints. These constraints are subsumed by group-label constraints defined as follows: given a labeling of a ground set to an abelian group and a prescribed set F of forbidden labels, we define a subset of the ground set F-avoiding if the sum of the labels of its elements is not in F.
We study the problems of finding F-avoiding bases and common bases of two matroids. For the single matroid case, finding an F-avoiding basis is hard if F is part of the input, while for a fixed |F|, we show the polynomial solvability of the problem in several cases, including matroids representable over fixed, finite fields. For two matroids, we show that the complexity of finding an F-avoiding common basis depends on the group if F consists of a single forbidden label, while the problem is hard for any nontrivial fixed group if we allow at most two forbidden labels.
Based on joint work with F. Hörsch, A. Imolay, R. Mizutani, and T. Oki.
Thursday 30 January 2025 - Daniel Kadnikov (Alan Turing Institute)
Informational Aspects of Strategic Forms
In the first part of the talk, we revisit two traditional game-theoretic models: the extensive tree form (ETF) and strategic form. The latter (explicitly) provides information only about atemporal strategies and the outcomes these strategies induce. The former specifies information sets -- what players know -- and local choices at the information sets -- what players do. The strategic assignments approach -- the classical method to generate the strategic form of a given ETF -- specifies local decisions at every information set and finds continuous paths from the root to the leaves. As we show, the lesser-known powers approach at once yields the same strategic forms while offering a computational improvement.
In the second part of the talk, we go in the opposite direction and explore which aspects of the original decision structure are recoverable from strategic forms. In doing this, we do not start from scratch as the same question was addressed by Mailath, Samuelson, and Swinkels [Econometrica 1993; JET 1994]. The authors introduced and studied the concept of the so-called normal form information sets. We then show how leveraging the powers approach sheds light on the intrinsic geometry of strategic forms and offers an exponential improvement in detecting normal form information sets.
This is joint work with Rahul Savani and Philipp Wichardt.
Friday 24 January 2025 - Jun Yan (Warwick)
Ramsey numbers of trees
Given a graph \(G\), the Ramsey number \(R(G)\) is defined to be the smallest \(N\) such that any red/blue colouring of the complete graph \(K_N\) contains a monochromatic copy of \(G\). For a tree \(T\) whose bipartition classes have sizes \(t_1\geq t_2\), two simple constructions shows that \(R(T)\geq R_B(T):=\max\{t_1+2t_2,2t_1\}-1\), and Burr conjectured in 1974 that \(R(T)=R_B(T)\).
It has been shown that Burr’s conjecture is false for certain trees called the double stars, though all of these known counterexamples have large maximum degrees. In 2002, Haxell, Łuczak and Tingley showed that an approximate version of Burr’s conjecture is true if one imposes a maximum degree condition. In an upcoming joint work with Richard Montgomery and Matías Pavez-Signé, we prove that Burr’s conjecture is true for all trees with up to small linear maximum degrees. That is, there exists \(c>0\) such that for all trees \(T\) on \(n\) vertices with \(\Delta(T)\leq cn\), \(R(T)=R_B(T)\).
Thursday 23 January 2025 - Adva Mond (KCL)
Maker-Breaker percolation games on a random board
The (m,b) Maker-Breaker percolation game on an infinite graph G is played in the following way. Maker starts by choosing a vertex and naming it the origin. Maker and Breaker then alternately claim m and b unclaimed edges of G, respectively. Breaker wins if the component containing the origin becomes finite when his edges are deleted from G. Maker wins if she can indefinitely avoid a win of Breaker.
We will discuss the state of the art for this game, with special attention to the case where G is the result of bond percolation on the square lattice. In particular, we will show how this game can be analysed using tools from bootstrap percolation.
This is joint work with Vojtěch Dvořák and Victor Souza.