Mathematics Commons^™

Proper 3-Colorings Of Cycles And Hypercubes, Emily Cairncross

Honors Papers

In this paper, we look at two families of graphs, cycles and hypercubes, and compare how their sets of proper 3-colorings differ as the graphs get arbitrarily large. In particular, we find the probability of pairs of vertices at various distances being the same color in order to understand the range and scale of interactions between them. As we look at larger and larger cycles, larger and larger hypercubes, patterns begin to emerge. While the colors of vertices fixed fractions of the cycle away from each other are independent, a random 3-coloring of the hypercube is essentially a 2-coloring. This …