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Robertson–Seymour Theorem
In graph theory, the Robertson–Seymour theorem (also called the graph minor theorem) states that the undirected graphs, partially ordered by the graph minor relationship, form a well-quasi-ordering. Equivalently, every family of graphs that is closed under minors can be defined by a finite set of forbidden minors, in the same way that Wagner's theorem characterizes the planar graphs as being the graphs that do not have the complete graph ''K''5 or the complete bipartite graph ''K''3,3 as minors. The Robertson–Seymour theorem is named after mathematicians Neil Robertson and Paul D. Seymour, who proved it in a series of twenty papers spanning over 500 pages from 1983 to 2004. Before its proof, the statement of the theorem was known as Wagner's conjecture after the German mathematician Klaus Wagner, although Wagner said he never conjectured it. A weaker result for trees is implied by Kruskal's tree theorem, which was conjectured in 1937 by Andrew Vázsonyi and proved in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graph Theory
In mathematics, graph theory is the study of '' graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are connected by ''edges'' (also called ''links'' or ''lines''). A distinction is made between undirected graphs, where edges link two vertices symmetrically, and directed graphs, where edges link two vertices asymmetrically. Graphs are one of the principal objects of study in discrete mathematics. Definitions Definitions in graph theory vary. The following are some of the more basic ways of defining graphs and related mathematical structures. Graph In one restricted but very common sense of the term, a graph is an ordered pair G=(V,E) comprising: * V, a set of vertices (also called nodes or points); * E \subseteq \, a set of edges (also called links or lines), which are unordered pairs of vertices (that is, an edge is associated with t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reflexive Relation
In mathematics, a binary relation ''R'' on a set ''X'' is reflexive if it relates every element of ''X'' to itself. An example of a reflexive relation is the relation " is equal to" on the set of real numbers, since every real number is equal to itself. A reflexive relation is said to have the reflexive property or is said to possess reflexivity. Along with symmetry and transitivity, reflexivity is one of three properties defining equivalence relations. Definitions Let R be a binary relation on a set X, which by definition is just a subset of X \times X. For any x, y \in X, the notation x R y means that (x, y) \in R while "not x R y" means that (x, y) \not\in R. The relation R is called if x R x for every x \in X or equivalently, if \operatorname_X \subseteq R where \operatorname_X := \ denotes the identity relation on X. The of R is the union R \cup \operatorname_X, which can equivalently be defined as the smallest (with respect to \subseteq) reflexive relation o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Path Graph
In the mathematical field of graph theory, a path graph or linear graph is a graph whose vertices can be listed in the order such that the edges are where . Equivalently, a path with at least two vertices is connected and has two terminal vertices (vertices that have degree 1), while all others (if any) have degree 2. Paths are often important in their role as subgraphs of other graphs, in which case they are called paths in that graph. A path is a particularly simple example of a tree, and in fact the paths are exactly the trees in which no vertex has degree 3 or more. A disjoint union of paths is called a linear forest. Paths are fundamental concepts of graph theory, described in the introductory sections of most graph theory texts. See, for example, Bondy and Murty (1976), Gibbons (1985), or Diestel (2005). As Dynkin diagrams In algebra, path graphs appear as the Dynkin diagrams of type A. As such, they classify the root system of type A and the Weyl group o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Disjoint Union
In mathematics, a disjoint union (or discriminated union) of a family of sets (A_i : i\in I) is a set A, often denoted by \bigsqcup_ A_i, with an injection of each A_i into A, such that the images of these injections form a partition of A (that is, each element of A belongs to exactly one of these images). A disjoint union of a family of pairwise disjoint sets is their union. In category theory, the disjoint union is the coproduct of the category of sets, and thus defined up to a bijection. In this context, the notation \coprod_ A_i is often used. The disjoint union of two sets A and B is written with infix notation as A \sqcup B. Some authors use the alternative notation A \uplus B or A \operatorname B (along with the corresponding \biguplus_ A_i or \operatorname_ A_i). A standard way for building the disjoint union is to define A as the set of ordered pairs (x, i) such that x \in A_i, and the injection A_i \to A as x \mapsto (x, i). Example Consider the se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Forest (graph Theory)
In graph theory, a tree is an undirected graph in which any two vertices are connected by ''exactly one'' path, or equivalently a connected acyclic undirected graph. A forest is an undirected graph in which any two vertices are connected by ''at most one'' path, or equivalently an acyclic undirected graph, or equivalently a disjoint union of trees. A polytreeSee . (or directed tree or oriented treeSee .See . or singly connected networkSee .) is a directed acyclic graph (DAG) whose underlying undirected graph is a tree. A polyforest (or directed forest or oriented forest) is a directed acyclic graph whose underlying undirected graph is a forest. The various kinds of data structures referred to as trees in computer science have underlying graphs that are trees in graph theory, although such data structures are generally rooted trees. A rooted tree may be directed, called a directed rooted tree, either making all its edges point away from the root—in which case it is ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Forbidden Graph Characterization
In graph theory, a branch of mathematics, many important families of graphs can be described by a finite set of individual graphs that do not belong to the family and further exclude all graphs from the family which contain any of these forbidden graphs as (induced) subgraph or minor. A prototypical example of this phenomenon is Kuratowski's theorem, which states that a graph is planar (can be drawn without crossings in the plane) if and only if it does not contain either of two forbidden graphs, the complete graph and the complete bipartite graph . For Kuratowski's theorem, the notion of containment is that of graph homeomorphism, in which a subdivision of one graph appears as a subgraph of the other. Thus, every graph either has a planar drawing (in which case it belongs to the family of planar graphs) or it has a subdivision of at least one of these two graphs as a subgraph (in which case it does not belong to the planar graphs). Definition More generally, a forbidden g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Complement (set Theory)
In set theory, the complement of a set , often denoted by (or ), is the set of elements not in . When all sets in the universe, i.e. all sets under consideration, are considered to be members of a given set , the absolute complement of is the set of elements in that are not in . The relative complement of with respect to a set , also termed the set difference of and , written B \setminus A, is the set of elements in that are not in . Absolute complement Definition If is a set, then the absolute complement of (or simply the complement of ) is the set of elements not in (within a larger set that is implicitly defined). In other words, let be a set that contains all the elements under study; if there is no need to mention , either because it has been previously specified, or it is obvious and unique, then the absolute complement of is the relative complement of in : A^\complement = U \setminus A. Or formally: A^\complement = \. The absolute complement of is u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Closure (mathematics)
In mathematics, a subset of a given set is closed under an operation of the larger set if performing that operation on members of the subset always produces a member of that subset. For example, the natural numbers are closed under addition, but not under subtraction: is not a natural number, although both 1 and 2 are. Similarly, a subset is said to be closed under a ''collection'' of operations if it is closed under each of the operations individually. The closure of a subset is the result of a closure operator applied to the subset. The ''closure'' of a subset under some operations is the smallest subset that is closed under these operations. It is often called the ''span'' (for example linear span) or the ''generated set''. Definitions Let be a set equipped with one or several methods for producing elements of from other elements of .Operations and ( partial) multivariate function are examples of such methods. If is a topological space, the limit of a sequence of ele ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minimal Element
In mathematics, especially in order theory, a maximal element of a subset ''S'' of some preordered set is an element of ''S'' that is not smaller than any other element in ''S''. A minimal element of a subset ''S'' of some preordered set is defined dually as an element of ''S'' that is not greater than any other element in ''S''. The notions of maximal and minimal elements are weaker than those of greatest element and least element which are also known, respectively, as maximum and minimum. The maximum of a subset S of a preordered set is an element of S which is greater than or equal to any other element of S, and the minimum of S is again defined dually. In the particular case of a partially ordered set, while there can be at most one maximum and at most one minimum there may be multiple maximal or minimal elements. Specializing further to totally ordered sets, the notions of maximal element and maximum coincide, and the notions of minimal element and minimum coincide. As an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antichain
In mathematics, in the area of order theory, an antichain is a subset of a partially ordered set such that any two distinct elements in the subset are incomparable. The size of the largest antichain in a partially ordered set is known as its width. By Dilworth's theorem, this also equals the minimum number of chains (totally ordered subsets) into which the set can be partitioned. Dually, the height of the partially ordered set (the length of its longest chain) equals by Mirsky's theorem the minimum number of antichains into which the set can be partitioned. The family of all antichains in a finite partially ordered set can be given join and meet operations, making them into a distributive lattice. For the partially ordered system of all subsets of a finite set, ordered by set inclusion, the antichains are called Sperner families and their lattice is a free distributive lattice, with a Dedekind number of elements. More generally, counting the number of antichains of a finite ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infinite Descending Chain
In mathematics, a total or linear order is a partial order in which any two elements are comparable. That is, a total order is a binary relation \leq on some set X, which satisfies the following for all a, b and c in X: # a \leq a ( reflexive). # If a \leq b and b \leq c then a \leq c ( transitive). # If a \leq b and b \leq a then a = b ( antisymmetric). # a \leq b or b \leq a (strongly connected, formerly called total). Total orders are sometimes also called simple, connex, or full orders. A set equipped with a total order is a totally ordered set; the terms simply ordered set, linearly ordered set, and loset are also used. The term ''chain'' is sometimes defined as a synonym of ''totally ordered set'', but refers generally to some sort of totally ordered subsets of a given partially ordered set. An extension of a given partial order to a total order is called a linear extension of that partial order. Strict and non-strict total orders A on a set X is a strict partial o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Preorder
In mathematics, especially in order theory, a preorder or quasiorder is a binary relation that is reflexive and transitive. Preorders are more general than equivalence relations and (non-strict) partial orders, both of which are special cases of a preorder: an antisymmetric (or skeletal) preorder is a partial order, and a symmetric preorder is an equivalence relation. The name comes from the idea that preorders (that are not partial orders) are 'almost' (partial) orders, but not quite; they are neither necessarily antisymmetric nor asymmetric. Because a preorder is a binary relation, the symbol \,\leq\, can be used as the notational device for the relation. However, because they are not necessarily antisymmetric, some of the ordinary intuition associated to the symbol \,\leq\, may not apply. On the other hand, a preorder can be used, in a straightforward fashion, to define a partial order and an equivalence relation. Doing so, however, is not always useful or worthwh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
