Bounding the order of tournaments without transitive subtournaments of certain size. A tournament o

hughy46u

hughy46u

Answered question

2022-05-21

Bounding the order of tournaments without transitive subtournaments of certain size.
A tournament of order N is a directed graph on [N] obtained by assigning a direction to each edge of K N . A tournament D is transitive if for every triple a , b , c N, ( a , b ) , ( b , c ) E ( D ) implies that ( a , c ) E ( D ). For n N let f(n) be the maximum integer such that there exists a tournament of order f(n) without a transitive sub-tournament of size n. Show that f ( n ) > ( 1 + o ( 1 ) ) 2 n 1 2 .

Answer & Explanation

grindweg1v

grindweg1v

Beginner2022-05-22Added 12 answers

Step 1
Your proof is nearly correct. By rearranging the last part, the work shows that if N g ( n ) := ( 1 o ( 1 ) ) 2 ( n 1 ) / 2 , then there exists a tournament on N vertices lacking copies of the transitive tournament of order n. Hence f ( n ) g ( n ) and the desired result follows.
Concretely I think you went wrong when writing out your implication arrows about the size of N, which confused the order of quantifiers.
Step 2
Edit: The correct way to order the last part of your argument is as follows. Let g(n) be the largest N such that E [ X ] = n ! ( N n ) 2 ( n 2 ) < 1. Clearly f ( n ) g ( n ). By essentially the same asymptotic analysis as what you gave (since the approximation is sharp), we see that g ( n ) ( 1 o ( 1 ) ) 2 ( n 1 ) / 2 . Hence, we have have that f ( n ) g ( n ) ( 1 o ( 1 ) ) 2 ( n 1 ) / 2 .
But you instead proved an upper bound for g(n). Namely, your current analysis shows that if E [ X ] < 1 then it is necessary for N to be smaller than the RHS. Thus increasing the RHS does lead to a better lower bound for f(n), but rather a weaker upper bound of g(n).

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