A simplified disproof of Beck’s three permutations conjecture and an application to root-mean-squared discrepancy

A k-permutation family on n vertices is a set-system consisting of the intervals of k permutations of the integers 1 to n. The discrepancy of a set-system is the minimum over all red–blue vertex colourings of the maximum difference between the number of red and blue vertices in any set in the system. In 2011, Newman and Nikolov disproved a conjecture of Beck that the discrepancy of any 3-permutation family is at most a constant independent of n. Here we give a simpler proof that Newman and Nikolov’s sequence of 3-permutation families has discrepancy $\Omega (\log \,n)$ . We also exhibit a sequence of 6-permutation families with root-mean-squared discrepancy $\Omega (\sqrt {\log \,n} )$ ; that is, in any red–blue vertex colouring, the square root of the expected squared difference between the number of red and blue vertices in an interval of the system is $\Omega (\sqrt {\log \,n} )$ .

SELF-STABILIZING ALGORITHMS FOR UNFRIENDLY PARTITIONS INTO TWO DISJOINT DOMINATING SETS

An unfriendly partition is a partition of the vertices of a graph G = (V,E) into two sets, say Red R(V) and Blue B(V), such that every Red vertex has at least as many Blue neighbors as Red neighbors, and every Blue vertex has at least as many Red neighbors as Blue neighbors. We present three polynomial time, self-stabilizing algorithms for finding unfriendly partitions in arbitrary graphs G, or equivalently into two disjoint dominating sets.

ON EMBEDDING A GRAPH ON TWO SETS OF POINTS

Let R and B be two sets of points such that the points of R are colored red and the points of B are colored blue. Let G be a planar graph such that |R| vertices of G are red and |B| vertices of G are blue. A bichromatic point-set embedding of G on R ∪ B is a crossing-free drawing of G such that each blue vertex is mapped to a point of B, each red vertex is mapped to a point of R, and each edge is a polygonal curve. We study the curve complexity of bichromatic point-set embeddings; i.e., the number of bends per edge that are necessary and sufficient to compute such drawings. We show that O(n) bends are sometimes necessary. We also prove that two bends per edge suffice if G is a 2-colored caterpillar and that for properly 2-colored caterpillars, properly 2-colored wreaths, 2-colored paths, and 2-colored cycles the number of bends per edge can be reduced to one, which is worst-case optimal.