Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Asteroidal Sets And Dominating Targets In Graphs, Oleksiy Al-Saadi

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The focus of this PhD thesis is on various distance and domination properties in graphs. In particular, we prove strong results about the interactions between asteroidal sets and dominating targets. Our results add to or extend a plethora of results on these properties within the literature. We define the class of strict dominating pair graphs and show structural and algorithmic properties of this class. Notably, we prove that such graphs have diameter 3, 4, or contain an asteroidal quadruple. Then, we design an algorithm to to efficiently recognize chordal hereditary dominating pair graphs. We provide new results that describe the …

Partitions Of R^N With Maximal Seclusion And Their Applications To Reproducible Computation, Jason Vander Woude

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

We introduce and investigate a natural problem regarding unit cube tilings/partitions of Euclidean space and also consider broad generalizations of this problem. The problem fits well within a historical context of similar problems and also has applications to the study of reproducibility in randomized computation.

Given $k\in\mathbb{N}$ and $\epsilon\in(0,\infty)$, we define a $(k,\epsilon)$-secluded unit cube partition of $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ to be a unit cube partition of $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ such that for every point $\vec{p}\in\R^d$, the closed $\ell_{\infty}$ $\epsilon$-ball around $\vec{p}$ intersects at most $k$ cubes. The problem is to construct such partitions for each dimension $d$ with the primary goal of minimizing …

Extremal Problems In Graph Saturation And Covering, Adam Volk

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation considers several problems in extremal graph theory with the aim of finding the maximum or minimum number of certain subgraph counts given local conditions. The local conditions of interest to us are saturation and covering. Given graphs F and H, a graph G is said to be F-saturated if it does not contain any copy of F, but the addition of any missing edge in G creates at least one copy of F. We say that G is H-covered if every vertex of G is contained in at least one copy of H. In the former setting, we …

Bootstrap Percolation On Random Geometric Graphs, Alyssa Whittemore

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Bootstrap Percolation is a discrete-time process that models the spread of information or disease across the vertex set of a graph. We consider the following version of this process:

Initially, each vertex of the graph is set active with probability p or inactive otherwise. Then, at each time step, every inactive vertex with at least k active neighbors becomes active. Active vertices will always remain active. The process ends when it reaches a stationary state. If all the vertices eventually become active, then we say we achieve percolation.

This process has been widely studied on many families of graphs, deterministic …

A Combinatorial Formula For Kazhdan-Lusztig Polynomials Of Sparse Paving Matroids, George Nasr

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

We present a combinatorial formula using skew Young tableaux for the coefficients of Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials for sparse paving matroids. These matroids are known to be logarithmically almost all matroids, but are conjectured to be almost all matroids. We also show the positivity of these coefficients using our formula. In special cases, such as for uniform matroids, our formula has a nice combinatorial interpretation.

Advisers: Kyungyong Lee and Jamie Radclie

A Mathematical Model Of Speeding, Jared Ott, Xavier Pérez Giménez

Honors Theses

Crime is often regarded as nonsensical, impulsive, and irrational. These conjectures are pointed, though conversation about the pros and cons of crime does not happen often. People point to harsh fines, jail times, and life restrictions as their reason for judgement, stating that the trade-offs are far too unbalanced to participate in illicit activity. Yet, everyday people commit small crimes, sometimes based on hedonistic desires, other times based on a rational thought process.

Speeding seems to be one of those that almost all people commit at least once during their life. Our work hopes to make an incremental improvement on …

Fractional Difference Operators And Related Boundary Value Problems, Scott C. Gensler

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this dissertation we develop a fractional difference calculus for functions on a discrete domain. We start by showing that the Taylor monomials, which play a role analagous to that of the power functions in ordinary differential calculus, can be expressed in terms of a family of polynomials which I will refer to as the Pochhammer polynomials. These important functions, the Taylor monomials, were previously described by other scholars primarily in terms of the gamma function. With only this description it is challenging to understand their properties. Describing the Taylor monomials in terms of the Pochhammer polynomials has made it …

On Coding For Partial Erasure Channels, Carolyn Mayer

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Error correcting codes have been essential to the technology we use in everyday life in digital storage, wireless communication, barcodes, and much more. Different channel models are used for different types of communication (for example, if information is sent to one person or to many people) and different types of errors. Partial erasure channels were recently introduced to model applications in which some information remains after an erasure event. These remnants of information may be used to increase the chances of successful decoding. We introduce a new partial erasure channel in which partial erasures correspond to individual bit erasures in …

Graphs With Few Spanning Substructures, Jessica De Silva

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this thesis, we investigate a number of problems related to spanning substructures of graphs. The first few chapters consider extremal problems related to the number of forest-like structures of a graph. We prove that one can find a threshold graph which contains the minimum number of spanning pseudoforests, as well as rooted spanning forests, amongst all graphs on n vertices and e edges. This has left the open question of exactly which threshold graphs have the minimum number of these spanning substructures. We make progress towards this question in particular cases of spanning pseudoforests.

The final chapter takes on …

Design And Analysis Of Graph-Based Codes Using Algebraic Lifts And Decoding Networks, Allison Beemer

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Error-correcting codes seek to address the problem of transmitting information efficiently and reliably across noisy channels. Among the most competitive codes developed in the last 70 years are low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, a class of codes whose structure may be represented by sparse bipartite graphs. In addition to having the potential to be capacity-approaching, LDPC codes offer the significant practical advantage of low-complexity graph-based decoding algorithms. Graphical substructures called trapping sets, absorbing sets, and stopping sets characterize failure of these algorithms at high signal-to-noise ratios. This dissertation focuses on code design for and analysis of iterative graph-based message-passing decoders. The …

Antichains And Diameters Of Set Systems, Brent Mckain

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this thesis, we present a number of results, mostly concerning set systems that are antichains and/or have bounded diameter. Chapter 1 gives a more detailed outline of the thesis. In Chapter 2, we give a new short proof of Kleitman's theorem concerning the maximal size of a set system with bounded diameter. In Chapter 3, we turn our attention to antichains with bounded diameter. Šileikis conjectured that an antichain of diameter D has size at most (n/D/2). We present several partial results towards the conjecture.

In 2014, Leader and Long gave asymptotic bounds on the size of …

Six Septembers: Mathematics For The Humanist, Patrick Juola, Stephen Ramsay

Zea E-Books Collection

Scholars of all stripes are turning their attention to materials that represent enormous opportunities for the future of humanistic inquiry. The purpose of this book is to impart the concepts that underlie the mathematics they are likely to encounter and to unfold the notation in a way that removes that particular barrier completely. This book is a primer for developing the skills to enable humanist scholars to address complicated technical material with confidence. This book, to put it plainly, is concerned with the things that the author of a technical article knows, but isn’t saying. Like any field, mathematics operates …

Graph Centers, Hypergraph Degree Sequences, And Induced-Saturation, Sarah Lynne Behrens

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The center of a graph is the set of vertices whose distance to other vertices is minimal. The centralizing number of a graph G is the minimum number of additional vertices in any graph H where V(G) is the center of H. Buckley, Miller, and Slater and He and Liu provided infinite families of graphs with each centralizing number. We show the number of graphs with each nonzero centralizing number grows super-exponentially with the number of vertices. We also provide a method of altering graphs without changing the centralizing number and give results about the centralizing …

Extremal Results For The Number Of Matchings And Independent Sets, Lauren Keough

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation answers several questions in extremal graph theory, each concerning the maximum or minimum number of certain substructures a graph can have, given that it must satisfy certain properties. In recent years there has been increased interest in such problems, which are extremal problems for "counting" parameters of graphs. The results in this dissertation focus on graphs that have n vertices and e edges and 3-uniform hypergraphs that have n vertices and e edges.

We first observe in the preliminaries chapter that for graphs with a fixed number of vertices and edges there is a threshold graph attaining the …

Results On Edge-Colored Graphs And Pancyclicity, James Carraher

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis focuses on determining when a graph with additional structure contains certain subgraphs, particularly circuits, cycles, or trees. The specific problems and presented results include a blend of many fundamental graph theory concepts such as edge-coloring, routing problems, decomposition problems, and containing cycles of various lengths. The three primary chapters in this thesis address the problems of finding eulerian circuits with additional restrictions, decomposing the edge-colored complete graph K_n into rainbow spanning trees, and showing a 4-connected claw-free and N(3,2,1)-free graph is pancyclic.

Adviser: Stephen G. Hartke

Combinatorial And Algebraic Coding Techniques For Flash Memory Storage, Kathryn A. Haymaker

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Error-correcting codes are used to achieve reliable and efficient transmission when storing or sending information across a noisy channel. This thesis investigates a mathematical approach to coding techniques for storage devices such as flash memory storage, although many of the resulting codes and coding schemes can be applied in other contexts. The main contributions of this work include the design of efficient codes and decoding algorithms using discrete structures such as graphs and finite geometries, and developing a variety of strategies for adapting codes to a multi-level setting.

Information storage devices are prone to errors over time, and the frequency …

The Weak Discrepancy And Linear Extension Diameter Of Grids And Other Posets, Katherine Victoria Johnson

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

A linear extension of a partially ordered set is simply a total ordering of the poset that is consistent with the original ordering. The linear extension diameter is a measure of how different two linear extensions could be, that is, the number of pairs of elements that are ordered differently by the two extensions. In this dissertation, we calculate the linear extension diameter of grids. This also gives us a nice characterization of the linear extensions that are the farthest from each other, and allows us to conclude that grids are diametrally reversing.

A linear extension of a poset might …

Combinatorics Using Computational Methods, Derrick Stolee

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Computational combinatorics involves combining pure mathematics, algorithms, and computational resources to solve problems in pure combinatorics. This thesis provides a theoretical framework for combinatorial search, which is then applied to several problems in combinatorics. Some results in space-bounded computational complexity are also presented.

Isomorph-Free Generation Of 2-Connected Graphs With Applications, Derrick Stolee

CSE Technical Reports

Many interesting graph families contain only 2-connected graphs, which have ear decompositions. We develop a technique to generate families of unlabeled 2-connected graphs using ear augmentations and apply this technique to two problems. In the first application, we search for uniquely Kr-saturated graphs and find the list of uniquely K4-saturated graphs on at most 12 vertices, supporting current conjectures for this problem. In the second application, we verify the Edge Reconstruction Conjecture for all 2-connected graphs on at most 12 vertices. This technique can be easily extended to more problems concerning 2-connected graphs.

Packings And Realizations Of Degree Sequences With Specified Substructures, Tyler Seacrest

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation focuses on the intersection of two classical and fundamental areas in graph theory: graph packing and degree sequences. The question of packing degree sequences lies naturally in this intersection, asking when degree sequences have edge-disjoint realizations on the same vertex set. The most significant result in this area is Kundu's k-Factor Theorem, which characterizes when a degree sequence packs with a constant sequence. We prove a series of results in this spirit, and we particularly search for realizations of degree sequences with edge-disjoint 1-factors.

Perhaps the most fundamental result in degree sequence theory is the Erdos-Gallai Theorem, characterizing …

Extremal Trees And Reconstruction, Andrew Ray

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Problems in two areas of graph theory will be considered.

First, I will consider extremal problems for trees. In these questions we examine the trees that maximize or minimize various invariants. For instance the number of independent sets, the number of matchings, the number of subtrees, the sum of pairwise distances, the spectral radius, and the number of homomorphisms to a fixed graph. I have two general approaches to these problems. To find the extremal trees in the collection of trees on n vertices with a fixed degree bound I use the certificate method. The certificate is a branch invariant, …