Exploring the world of graphs: from K_5 and K(3,3) to G(n,p)

Summer Institute for Mathematics at the University of Washington 2012
Ioana Dumitriu

Graphs are fairly simple objects with extremely complex properties, which show up in applications from optimization to coding theory and from networks to sampling. Colorability, planarity, connectivity: these are all very important properties which describe the "neighborhood" structure of a graph, and speak about the "closeness" of the vertices. This class will take a look at some of these properties, together with their applications. We will start with simple ones, like planarity (with the K_5 and K(3,3) theorem), and toward the end of the course we will introduce the random graph G(n,p), one of the most celebrated discrete models and a wondeful tool in graph theory.