Tanenbaum, Trenk, and Fishburn introduced the concept of linear discrepancy in 2001, proposing it as a way to measure a partially ordered set's distance from being a linear order. In addition to proving a number of results about linear discrepancy, they posed eight challenges and questions for future work. This dissertation completely resolves one of those challenges and makes contributions on two others. This dissertation has three principal components: 3-discrepancy irreducible posets of width 3, degree bounds, and online algorithms for linear discrepancy. The first principal component of this dissertation provides a forbidden subposet characterization of the posets with linear discrepancy equal to 2 by completing the determination of the posets that are 3-irreducible with respect to linear discrepancy. The second principal component concerns degree bounds for linear discrepancy and weak discrepancy, a parameter similar to linear discrepancy. Specifically, if every point of a poset is incomparable to at most D other points of the poset, we prove three bounds: the linear discrepancy of an interval order is at most D, with equality if and only if it contains an antichain of size D; the linear discrepancy of a disconnected poset is at most the greatest integer less than or equal to (3D-1)/2; and the weak discrepancy of a poset is at most D. The third principal component of this dissertation incorporates another large area of research, that of online algorithms. We show that no online algorithm for linear discrepancy can be better than 3-competitive, even for the class of interval orders. We also give a 2-competitive online algorithm for linear discrepancy on semiorders and show that this algorithm is optimal.

In this dissertation we solve several combinatorial problems in different areas of mathematics: automata theory, combinatorics of partially ordered sets and extremal combinatorics. Firstly, we focus on some new automata that do not seem to have occurred much in the literature, that of solvability of mazes. For our model, a maze is a countable strongly connected digraph together with a proper colouring of its edges (without two edges leaving a vertex getting the same colour) and two special vertices: the origin and the destination. A pointer or robot starts in the origin of a maze and moves naturally between its vertices, according to a sequence of specific instructions from the set of all colours; if the robot is at a vertex for which there is no out-edge of the colour indicated by the instruction, it remains at that vertex and proceeds to execute the next instruction in the sequence. We call such a finite or infinite sequence of instructions an algorithm. In particular, one of the most interesting and very natural sets of mazes occurs when our maze is the square lattice Z2 as a graph with some of its edges removed. Obviously, we need to require that the origin and the destination vertices are in the same connected component and it is very natural to take the four instructions to be the cardinal directions. In this set-up, we make progress towards a beautiful problem posed by Leader and Spink in 2011 which asks whether there is an algorithm which solves the set of all such mazes. Next, we address a problem regarding symmetric chain decompositions of posets. We ask if there exists a symmetric chain decomposition of a 2 × 2 × ... × 2 × n cuboid (k 2’s) such that no chain has a subchain of the form (a1,...,ak,0) ≺ ... ≺ (a1,...,ak,n−1)? We show this is true precisely when k≥5 and n≥3. Thisquestion arises naturally when considering products of symmetric chain decompositions which induce orthogonal chain decompositions — the existence of the decompositions provided in this chapter unexpectedly resolves the most difficult case of previous work by Spink on almost orthogonal symmetric chain decompositions (2017) which makes progress on a conjecture of Shearer and Kleitman. Moreover, we generalize our methods to other finite graded posets. Finally, we address two different problems in extremal combinatorics related to mathematical physics. Firstly, we study metastable states in the Ising model. We propose a general model for 1-flip spin systems, and initiate the study of extremal properties of their stable states. By translating local stability conditions into Sperner- type conditions, we provide non-trivial upper bounds which are often tight for large classes of such systems. The last topic we consider is a deterministic bootstrap percolation type problem. More specifically, we prove several extremal results about fast 2-neighbour percolation on the two dimensional grid.

In 2001, Fishburn, Tanenbaum, and Trenk published a pair of papers that introduced the notions of linear and weak discrepancy of a partially ordered set or poset. Linear discrepancy for a poset is the least k such that for any ordering of the points in the poset there is a pair of incomparable points at least distance k away in the ordering. Weak discrepancy is similar to linear discrepancy except that the distance is observed over weak labelings (i.e. two points can have the same label if they are incomparable, but order is still preserved). My thesis gives a variety of results pertaining to these properties and other forms of discrepancy in posets. The first chapter of my thesis partially answers a question of Fishburn, Tanenbaum, and Trenk that was to characterize those posets with linear discrepancy two. It makes the characterization for those posets with width two and references the paper where the full characterization is given. The second chapter introduces the notion of t-discrepancy which is similar to weak discrepancy except only the weak labelings with at most t copies of any label are considered. This chapter shows that determining a poset's t-discrepancy is NP-Complete. It also gives the t-discrepancy for the disjoint sum of chains and provides a polynomial time algorithm for determining t-discrepancy of semiorders. The third chapter presents another notion of discrepancy namely total discrepancy which minimizes the average distance between incomparable elements. This chapter proves that finding this value can be done in polynomial time unlike linear discrepancy and t-discrepancy. The final chapter answers another question of Fishburn, Tanenbaum, and Trenk that asked to characterize those posets that have equal linear and weak discrepancies. Though determining the answer of whether the weak discrepancy and linear discrepancy of a poset are equal is an NP-Complete problem, the set of minimal posets that have this property are given. At the end of the thesis I discuss two other open problems not mentioned in the previous chapters that relate to linear discrepancy. The first asks if there is a link between a poset's dimension and its linear discrepancy. The second refers to approximating linear discrepancy and possible ways to do it.

This dissertation has two principal components: the dimension of posets with planar cover graphs, and the cartesian product of posets whose cover graphs have hamiltonian cycles that parse into symmetric chains. Posets of height two can have arbitrarily large dimension. In 1981, Kelly provided an infinite sequence of planar posets that shows that the dimension of planar posets can also be arbitrarily large. However, the height of the posets in this sequence increases with the dimension. In 2009, Felsner, Li, and Trotter conjectured that for each integer h at least 2, there exists a least positive integer c(h) so that if P is a poset with a planar cover graph (the class of posets with planar cover graphs includes the class of planar posets) and the height of P is h, then the dimension of P is at most c(h). In the first principal component of this dissertation we prove this conjecture. We also give the best known lower bound for c(h), noting that this lower bound is far from the upper bound. In the second principal component, we consider posets with the Hamiltonian Cycle--Symmetric Chain Partition (HC-SCP) property. A poset of width w has this property if its cover graph has a hamiltonian cycle which parses into w symmetric chains. This definition is motivated by a proof of Sperner's theorem that uses symmetric chains, and was intended as a possible method of attack on the Middle Two Levels Conjecture. We show that the subset lattices have the HC-SCP property by showing that the class of posets with the strong HC-SCP property, a slight strengthening of the HC-SCP property, is closed under cartesian product with a two-element chain. Furthermore, we show that the cartesian product of any two posets from this strong class has the (weak) HC-SCP property.

This thesis contains several results concerning the combinatorics of partially ordered sets (posets) which are either of enumerative or extremal nature. <br><br> The first concerns conjectures of Friedland and Kahn, which state that the (extremal) d-regular graph on N vertices containing both the maximal number of matchings and independent sets of a fixed size is the graph consisting of disjoint union of appropriate number of complete bipartite d-regular graphs on 2d vertices. We show that the conjectures are true in an asymptotic sense, using entropy techniques. <br><br> As a second result, we give tight bounds on the size of the largest Boolean family which contains no three distinct subsets forming an "induced V" (i.e. if A,B,C are all in our family, if C is contained in the intersection of A B, A must be a subset of B). This result, though similar to known results, gives the first bound on a family defined by an induced property. <br><br> We pose both Dedekind-type questions concerning the number of antichains and a Stanley-type question concerning the number of linear extensions in generalized Boolean lattices; namely, products of chain posets and the poset of partially defined functions. We provide asymptotically tight bounds for these problems. <br><br> A Boolean function, f, is called cherry-free if for all triples x,y,z where z covers both x and y, f(z)=1 whenever both f(x)=1 and f(y)=1. We give bounds on the number of cherry-free functions on bipartite regular posets, with stronger results for bipartite posets under an additional co-degree hypotheses. We discuss applications of these functions to Boolean Horn functions and similar structures in ranked regular posets.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008. / Committee Chair: Trotter, William T.; Committee Member: Duke, Richard A.; Committee Member: Randall, Dana; Committee Member: Thomas, Robin; Committee Member: Yu, Xingxing

This dissertation is in two parts, each of three chapters. In Part 1, I shall prove some results concerning variants of the 'secretary problem'. In Part 2, I shall bound several generalizations of the acyclic chromatic number of a graph as functions of its maximum degree. I shall begin Chapter 1 by describing the classical secretary problem, in which the aim is to select the best candidate for the post of a secretary, and its solution. I shall then summarize some of its many generalizations that have been studied up to now, provide some basic theory, and briefly outline the results that I shall prove. In Chapter 2, I shall suppose that the candidates come as ‘m’ pairs of equally qualified identical twins. I shall describe an optimal strategy, a formula for its probability of success and the asymptotic behaviour of this strategy and its probability of success as m → ∞. I shall also find an optimal strategy and its probability of success for the analagous version with ‘c’-tuplets. I shall move away from known posets in Chapter 3, assuming instead that the candidates come from a poset about which the only information known is its size and number of maximal elements. I shall show that, given this information, there is an algorithm that is successful with probability at least ¹/e . For posets with ‘k ≥ 2’ maximal elements, I shall prove that if their width is also ‘k’ then this can be improved to ‘k-1√1/k’ and show that no better bound of this type is possible. In Chapter 4, I shall describe the history of acyclic colourings, in which a graph must be properly coloured with no two-coloured cycle, and state some results known about them and their variants. In particular, I shall highlight a result of Alon, McDiarmid and Reed, which bounds the acyclic chromatic number of a graph by a function of its maximum degree. My results in the next two chapters are of this form. I shall consider two natural generalizations in Chapter 5. In the first, only cycles of length at least ’l’ must receive at least three colours. In the second, every cycle must receive at least ‘c’ colours, except those of length less than ‘c’, which must be multicoloured. My results in Chapter 6 generalize the concept of a cycle; it is now subgraphs with minimum degree ‘r’ that must receive at least three colours, rather than subgraphs with minimum degree two (which contain cycles). I shall also consider a natural version of this problem for hypergraphs.

The thesis consist of three independent parts. In the first part, we investigate the height sequence of an element of a partially ordered set. Let $x$ be an element of the partially ordered set $P$. Then $h_i(x)$ is the number of linear extensions of $P$ in which $x$ is in the $i$th lowest position. The sequence ${h_i(x)}$ is called the height sequence of $x$ in $P$. Stanley proved in 1981 that the height sequence is log-concave, but no combinatorial proof has been found, and Stanley's proof does not reveal anything about the deeper structure of the height sequence. In this part of the thesis, we provide a combinatorial proof of a special case of Stanley's theorem. The proof of the inequality uses the Ahlswede--Daykin Four Functions Theorem. In the second part, we study two classes of segment orders introduced by Shahrokhi. Both classes are natural generalizations of interval containment orders and interval orders. We prove several properties of the classes, and inspired by the observation, that the classes seem to be very similar, we attempt to find out if they actually contain the same partially ordered sets. We prove that the question is equivalent to a stretchability question involving certain sets of pseudoline arrangements. We also prove several facts about continuous universal functions that would transfer segment orders of the first kind into segments orders of the second kind. In the third part, we consider the lattice whose elements are the subsets of ${1,2,ldots,n}$. Trotter and Felsner asked whether this subset lattice always contains a monotone Hamiltonian path. We make progress toward answering this question by constructing a path for all $n$ that satisfies the monotone properties and covers every set of size at most $3$. This portion of thesis represents joint work with David M.~Howard.

Orientador: Marcelo Firer / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Matematica, Estatistica e Computação Cientifica / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-13T06:58:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Spreafico_MarcosViniciusPereira_M.pdf: 558857 bytes, checksum: a9d033bd1132fd1bc42fcb1aa2296ef5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / Resumo: Neste trabalho fazemos uma apresentação dos espaços poset, introduzidos por Brualdi (1995), apresentamos os conceitos necessarios da teoria de conjuntos parcialmente ordenados e da teoria de codigos. Trabalhamos com uma questão de caráter amplo e estrutural deste contexto, o problema da determinação da ordem atraves da distribuição de pesos. A distribuição de pesos é essencialmente o conjunto das cardinalidades das esferas métricas e a pergunta que se coloca é em que medida este invariante determina a métrica em questão. Demonstramos que para as classes de codigos, cadeia, anticadeia, coroa e hierárquico, classes importantes no contexto da teoria de codigos, o problema possui uma resposta positiva e justificamos algumas conjecturas que relacionam este problema ao da reconstrução de grafos. / Abstract: In this work, we introduce the concept of poset codes (Brualdi - 1995) and in this context we study the weight distribution problem, presenting the necessary concepts of the partially ordered set and error correcting codes theory. The weight distribution is the cardinality of metric-spheres in finite dimensional vector space over a finite field endowed with a poset metric. The weight distribution problem asks for conditions to ensure that the weight distribution determines the metric. In this work we show that the weight distribution of some families of posets, namely the classes of anti-chain, chain, crown and hierarchical posets, determines the metric. We also show that the weight distribution determines some known invariants of posets. Finally, we present some conjectures relating the weight distribution problem and the reconstruction problem of graphs. / Mestrado / Mestre em Matemática

Orientador: Marcelo Firer / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Matemática, Estatística e Computação Científica / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-21T02:49:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 LucasD'Oliveira_RafaelGregorio_M.pdf: 16647897 bytes, checksum: a2258aca5a39f0a7d0bd2243b905a772 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Resumo: Até o trabalho presente, só era conhecido o raio de empacotamento de um código poset nos casos do poset ser uma cadeia, hierárquico, a união disjunta de cadeias do mesmo tamanho, e para algumas famílias de códigos. Nosso objetivo é abordar o caso geral de um poset qualquer. Para isso, iremos dividir o problema em dois. A primeira parte consiste em encontrar o raio de empacotamento de um único vetor. Veremos que este problema é equivalente à uma generalização de um problema NP-difícil famoso conhecido como \o problema da partição". Veremos então os principais resultados conhecidos sobre este problema dando atenção especial aos algoritmos para resolvê-lo. A receita principal destes algoritmos é o método da diferenciação, e sendo assim, iremos estendê-la para o caso geral. A segunda parte consiste em encontrar o vetor que determina o raio de empacotamento do código. Para isso, mostraremos como é as vezes possível comparar o raio de empacotamento de dois vetores sem calculá-los explicitamente / Abstract: Until the present work, the packing radius of a poset code was only known in the cases where the poset was a chain, hierarchy, a union of disjoint chains of the same size, and for some families of codes. Our objective is to approach the general case of any poset. To do this, we will divide the problem into two parts. The first part consists in finding the packing radius of a single vector. We will show that this is equivalent to a generalization of a famous NP-hard problem known as \the partition problem". Then, we will review the main results known about this problem giving special attention to the algorithms to solve it. The main ingredient to these algorithms is what is known as the differentiating method, and therefore, we will extend it to the general case. The second part consists in finding the vector that determines the packing radius of the code. For this, we will show how it is sometimes possible to compare the packing radius of two vectors without calculating them explicitly / Mestrado / Matematica / Mestre em Matemática