
Statistics Papers
Title
Universal Limit Theorems in Graph Coloring Problems With Connections to Extremal Combinatorics
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of this Version
2017
Publication Source
The Annals of Applied Probability
Volume
27
Issue
1
Start Page
337
Last Page
394
DOI
10.1214/16-AAP1205
Abstract
This paper proves limit theorems for the number of monochromatic edges in uniform random colorings of general random graphs. These can be seen as generalizations of the birthday problem (what is the chance that there are two friends with the same birthday?). It is shown that if the number of colors grows to infinity, the asymptotic distribution is either a Poisson mixture or a Normal depending solely on the limiting behavior of the ratio of the number of edges in the graph and the number of colors. This result holds for any graph sequence, deterministic or random. On the other hand, when the number of colors is fixed, a necessary and sufficient condition for asymptotic normality is determined. Finally, using some results from the emerging theory of dense graph limits, the asymptotic (nonnormal) distribution is characterized for any converging sequence of dense graphs. The proofs are based on moment calculations which relate to the results of Erdős and Alon on extremal subgraph counts. As a consequence, a simpler proof of a result of Alon, estimating the number of isomorphic copies of a cycle of given length in graphs with a fixed number of edges, is presented.
Copyright/Permission Statement
The original and published work is available at: https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aoap/1488790830#abstract
Keywords
Combinatorial probability, extremal combinatorics, graph coloring, limit theorems
Recommended Citation
Bhattacharya, B. B., Diaconis, P., & Mukherjee, S. (2017). Universal Limit Theorems in Graph Coloring Problems With Connections to Extremal Combinatorics. The Annals of Applied Probability, 27 (1), 337-394. http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/16-AAP1205
Date Posted: 27 November 2017
This document has been peer reviewed.