This thesis comprises of two separate game theoretic models that fall under the general umbrella of network formation games. The first is a coalitional model of interaction in social networks that is based on the idea of social distance, in which players seek interactions with similar others. Our model captures some of the phenomena observed on such networks, such as homophily driven interactions and the formation of small worlds for groups of players. Using social distance games, we analyze the interactions between players on the network, study the properties of efficient and stable networks, relate them to the underlying graphical structure of the game, and give an approximation algorithm for finding optimal social welfare. We then show that efficient networks are not necessarily stable, and stable networks do not necessarily maximise welfare. We use the stability gap to investigate the welfare of stable coalition structures, and propose two new solution concepts with improved welfare guarantees. The second model is a compact formulation of matchings with externalities. Our formulation achieves tractability of the representation at the expense of full expressivity. We formulate a template of solution concept that applies to games where externalities are involved, and instantiate it in the context of optimistic, neutral, and pessimistic reasoning. Then we investigate the complexity of the representation in the context of many-to-many and one-to-one matchings, and provide both computational hardness results and polynomial time algorithms where applicable.

abstract: The uncrossing partially ordered set $P_n$ is defined on the set of matchings on $2n$ points on a circle represented with wires. The order relation is $\tau'\leq \tau$ in $P_n$ if and only if $\tau'$ is obtained by resolving a crossing of $\tau$. %This partial order has been studied by Alman-Lian-Tran, Huang-Wen-Xie, Kenyon, and Lam. %The posets $P_n$ emerged from studies of circular planar electrical networks. Circular planar electrical networks are finite weighted undirected graphs embedded into a disk, with boundary vertices and interior vertices. By Curtis-Ingerman-Morrow and de Verdi\`ere-Gitler-Vertigan, the electrical networks can be encoded with response matrices. By Lam the space of response matrices for electrical networks has a cell structure, and this cell structure can be described by the uncrossing partial orders. %Lam proves that the posets can be identified with dual Bruhat order on affine permutations of type $(n,2n)$. Using this identification, Lam proves the poset $\hat{P}_n$, the uncrossing poset $P_n$ with a unique minimum element $\hat{0}$ adjoined, is Eulerian. This thesis consists of two sets of results: (1) flag enumeration in intervals in the uncrossing poset $P_n$ and (2) cyclic sieving phenomenon on the set $P_n$. I identify elements in $P_n$ with affine permutations of type $(0,2n)$. %This identification enables us to explicitly describe the elements in $P_n$ with the elements in $\mathcal{MP}_n$. Using this identification, I adapt a technique in Reading for finding recursions for the cd-indices of intervals in Bruhat order of Coxeter groups to the uncrossing poset $P_n$. As a result, I produce recursions for the cd-indices of intervals in the uncrossing poset $P_n$. I also obtain a recursion for the ab-indices of intervals in the poset $\hat{P}_n$, the poset $P_n$ with a unique minimum $\hat0$ adjoined. %We define an induced subposet $\mathcal{MP}_n$ of the affine permutations under Bruhat order. Reiner-Stanton-White defined the cyclic sieving phenomenon (CSP) associated to a finite cyclic group action on a finite set and a polynomial. Sagan observed the CSP on the set of non-crossing matchings with the $q$-Catalan polynomial. Bowling-Liang presented similar results on the set of $k$-crossing matchings for $1\leq k \leq 3$. In this dissertation, I focus on the set of all matchings on $[2n]:=\{1,2,\dots,2n\}$. I find the number of matchings fixed by $\frac{2\pi}{d}$ rotations for $d|2n$. I then find the polynomial $X_n(q)$ such that the set of matchings together with $X_n(q)$ and the cyclic group of order $2n$ exhibits the CSP. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Mathematics 2018

Einst als Hilfssatz für Szemerédis Theorem entwickelt, hat sich das Regularitätslemma in den vergangenen drei Jahrzehnten als eines der wichtigsten Werkzeuge der Graphentheorie etabliert. Im Wesentlichen hat das Lemma zum Inhalt, dass dichte Graphen durch eine konstante Anzahl quasizufälliger, bipartiter Graphen approximiert werden können, wodurch zwischen deterministischen und zufälligen Graphen eine Brücke geschlagen wird. Da letztere viel einfacher zu handhaben sind, stellt diese Verbindung oftmals eine wertvolle Zusatzinformation dar. Vom Regularitätslemma ausgehend gliedert sich die vorliegende Arbeit in zwei Teile. Mit Fragestellungen der Extremalen Hypergraphentheorie beschäftigt sich der erste Teil der Arbeit. Es wird zunächst eine Version des Regularitätslemmas Hypergraphen angewandt, um asymptotisch scharfe Schranken für das Auftreten von Hamiltonkreisen in uniformen Hypergraphen mit hohem Minimalgrad herzuleiten. Nachgewiesen werden des Weiteren asymptotisch scharfe Schranken für die Existenz von perfekten und nahezu perfekten Matchings in uniformen Hypergraphen mit hohem Minimalgrad. Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit wird ein neuer, Szemerédis ursprüngliches Konzept generalisierender Regularitätsbegriff eingeführt. Diesbezüglich wird ein Algorithmus vorgestellt, welcher zu einem gegebenen Graphen ohne zu dichte induzierte Subgraphen eine reguläre Partition in polynomieller Zeit berechnet. Als eine Anwendung dieses Resultats wird gezeigt, dass das Problem MAX-CUT für die oben genannte Graphenklasse in polynomieller Zeit bis auf einen multiplikativen Faktor von (1+o(1)) approximierbar ist. Der Untersuchung von Chung, Graham und Wilson zu quasizufälligen Graphen folgend wird ferner der sich aus dem neuen Regularitätskonzept ergebende Begriff der Quasizufälligkeit studiert und in Hinsicht darauf eine Charakterisierung mittels Eigenwertseparation der normalisierten Laplaceschen Matrix angegeben. / Once invented as an auxiliary lemma for Szemerédi''s Theorem the regularity lemma has become one of the most powerful tools in graph theory in the last three decades which has been widely applied in several fields of mathematics and theoretical computer science. Roughly speaking the lemma asserts that dense graphs can be approximated by a constant number of bipartite quasi-random graphs, thus, it narrows the gap between deterministic and random graphs. Since the latter are much easier to handle this information is often very useful. With the regularity lemma as the starting point two roads diverge in this thesis aiming at applications of the concept of regularity on the one hand and clarification of several aspects of this concept on the other. In the first part we deal with questions from extremal hypergraph theory and foremost we will use a generalised version of Szemerédi''s regularity lemma for uniform hypergraphs to prove asymptotically sharp bounds on the minimum degree which ensure the existence of Hamilton cycles in uniform hypergraphs. Moreover, we derive (asymptotically sharp) bounds on minimum degrees of uniform hypergraphs which guarantee the appearance of perfect and nearly perfect matchings. In the second part a novel notion of regularity will be introduced which generalises Szemerédi''s original concept. Concerning this new concept we provide a polynomial time algorithm which computes a regular partition for given graphs without too dense induced subgraphs. As an application we show that for the above mentioned class of graphs the problem MAX-CUT can be approximated within a multiplicative factor of (1+o(1)) in polynomial time. Furthermore, pursuing the line of research of Chung, Graham and Wilson on quasi-random graphs we study the notion of quasi-randomness resulting from the new notion of regularity and concerning this we provide a characterisation in terms of eigenvalue separation of the normalised Laplacian matrix.

The study of patterns in combinatorial structures has grown up in the past few decades to one of the most active trends of research in combinatorics. Historically, the study of permutations which are constrained by not containing subsequences ordered in various prescribed ways has been motivated by the problem of sorting permutations with certain devices. However, the richness of this notion became especially evident from its plentiful appearances in several very different disciplines, such as pure mathematics, mathematical physics, computer science,biology, and many others. In the last decades, similar notions of patterns have been considered on discrete structures other than permutations, such as integer sequences, lattice paths, graphs, matchings and set partitions. In the first part of this talk I will introduce the general framework of pattern posets and some classical problems about patterns. In the second part of this talk I will present some enumerative results obtained in my PhD thesis about patterns in permutations, lattice paths and matchings. In particular I will describe a generating tree with a single label for permutations avoiding the vincular pattern 1 - 32 - 4, a finite automata approach to enumerate lattice excursions avoiding a single pattern and some results about matchings avoiding juxtapositions and liftings of patterns.

Orientador: Prof. Dr. Daniel Morgato Martin / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do ABC, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências da Computação, 2014. / Neste trabalho estudamos o Problema do Isomorfismo de Grafos e a sua complexidade para resolvê-lo. Nossa principal contribuição é a proposta de um algoritmo para o caso geral do Problema, baseado no particionamento do conjunto de vértices e em emparelhamentos perfeitos de grafos bipartidos. Estudamos também o algoritmo de Brendan McKay, que é o mais rápido algoritmo para o Problema do Isomorfismo de Grafos conhecido. Ao final, implementamos o algoritmo proposto nesta dissertação e o algoritmo de McKay. Após a comparação dos dois algoritmos, verificamos que os resultados obtidos pelo algoritmo proposto não foram satisfatórios, porém apresentamos possíveis melhorias de como deixá-lo mais eficiente. / In this work we study the Graph Isomorphism Problem and their complexity to solve it. Our main contribution is to propose an algorithm for the general case of the Problem, based on partitioning the set vertex and perfect matchings of bipartite graphs. We also studied the Brendan McKay¿s algorithm, who is the fastest algorithm for the Graph Isomorphism Problem known. At the end, we implemented the algorithm proposed in this dissertation and McKay¿s algorithm. After comparison of the two algorithms, we found that the results obtained by the proposed algorithm were not satisfactory, but improvements are possible as to make it more efficient.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / This thesis aims to show that the theory of graphs, especially matching, can be studied in high school and gradually as the implementation of this theory in the classroom can foster in students interest in mathematics. Thus, this paper aims to demystify the idea that mathematics content ends with high school approaching students the theories recently developed in academy. The graph theory is considered an e cient tool to solve problems in various areas. There are numerous situations that can be modeled by that enable develop a range of skills, so it becomes so appealing to anyone who comes into contact with it. For the development of this thesis began our study addressing basic concepts of graph theory useful for understanding this work then present some problems that can be worked in high school and nalized with a speci c topic of this theory, matchings, with many applications that can be modeled as contextualized and practical problems of everyday life. / A presente disserta ção tem como objetivo mostrar que a teoria de grafos, sobretudo emparelhamentos, pode ser abordada no ensino m édio de forma gradativa. E como a implementa ção desta teoria em sala de aula pode despertar nos estudantes o interesse pela matem atica. Dessa forma, este trabalho pretende desmitifi car a ideia de que a matem atica se encerra com o conte udo do ensino m édio aproximando os estudantes das teorias desenvolvidas recentemente na academia. A teoria dos grafos é considerada uma ferramenta e ficiente para resolver problemas em diferentes áreas. São in úmeras situa ções que podem ser modeladas por grafos que possibilitam desenvolver uma s érie de habilidades, por isso ela se torna tao atraente para quem entra em contato com a mesma. Para o desenvolvimento desta disserta ção, iniciamos nosso estudo abordando conceitos b ásicos da teoria de grafos úteis a compreensão deste trabalho, em seguida apresentamos alguns problemas que podem ser trabalhados no ensino m édio e a nalisamos com um t ópico específi co desta teoria, emparelhamentos, com muitas aplica coes que podem ser contextualizadas e modeladas como problemas pr áticos do nosso cotidiano.

The aim for this thesis is to develop a foundation for a compression system for animated mesh sequences, specifically under dynamic change of mesh geometry and topology. Compression of mesh sequences is of special interest in the game industry and this particular thesis is a part of an ongoing series of projects at EA DICE. One of the primary challenges when creating a mesh compression system is creating a matching bijective subset of the mesh surfaces between two subsequent frames in the animation to guide remeshing of the sequence. This thesis describes a method for producing a bijective set of matching mesh patches between two meshes along with an error metric that captures the quality of the matching in terms of shape similarity and distortion. Theory of mathematical topology and tensor algebra used in methods for high performance scientific digital 3D-image recognition are here adopted to extract similar local features between meshes. Techniques for creating parametrizations of mesh patches are combined with techniques for matching point clouds and deforming mesh geometry under energy minimization in order to produce a matching set of patches. The presented algorithm successfully creates bijective sets of matched patches for subsequent meshes in a sequence as well as measures the error for the matchings. Results show an average matching set size of approximately 25% of the mesh areas over a sequence of meshes. This suggests that the data size of such a sequence could potentially be reduced by 25%.

We study certain questions related to the performance of the Karp-Sipser algorithm on the sparse Erdös-Rényi random graph. The Karp-Sipser algorithm, introduced by Karp and Sipser [34] is a greedy algorithm which aims to obtain a near-maximum matching on a given graph. The algorithm evolves through a sequence of steps. In each step, it picks an edge according to a certain rule, adds it to the matching and removes it from the remaining graph. The algorithm stops when the remining graph is empty. In [34], the performance of the Karp-Sipser algorithm on the Erdös-Rényi random graphs G(n,M = [^cn/₂]) and G(n, p = ^c/_n), c > 0 is studied. It is proved there that the algorithm behaves near-optimally, in the sense that the difference between the size of a matching obtained by the algorithm and a maximum matching is at most o(n), with high probability as n → ∞. The main result of [34] is a law of large numbers for the size of a maximum matching in G(n,M = ^cn/₂) and G(n, p = ^c/_n), c > 0. Aronson, Frieze and Pittel [2] further refine these results. In particular, they prove that for c < e, the Karp-Sipser algorithm obtains a maximum matching, with high probability as n → ∞; for c > e, the difference between the size of a matching obtained by the algorithm and the size of a maximum matching of G(n,M = ^cn/₂) is of order Θ_{log n}(n^1/5), with high probability as n → ∞. They further conjecture a central limit theorem for the size of a maximum matching of G(n,M = ^cn/₂) and G(n, p = ^c/_n) for all c > 0. As noted in [2], the central limit theorem for c < 1 is a consequence of the result of Pittel [45]. In this thesis, we prove a central limit theorem for the size of a maximum matching of both G(n,M = ^cn/₂) and G(n, p = ^c/_n) for c > e. (We do not analyse the case 1 ≤ c ≤ e). Our approach is based on the further analysis of the Karp-Sipser algorithm. We use the results from [2] and refine them. For c > e, the difference between the size of a matching obtained by the algorithm and the size of a maximum matching is of order Θ_{log n}(n^1/5), with high probability as n → ∞, and the study [2] suggests that this difference is accumulated at the very end of the process. The question how the Karp-Sipser algorithm evolves in its final stages for c > e, motivated us to consider the following problem in this thesis. We study a model for the destruction of a random network by fire. Let us assume that we have a multigraph with minimum degree at least 2 with real-valued edge-lengths. We first choose a uniform random point from along the length and set it alight. The edges burn at speed 1. If the fire reaches a node of degree 2, it is passed on to the neighbouring edge. On the other hand, a node of degree at least 3 passes the fire either to all its neighbours or none, each with probability 1/2. If the fire extinguishes before the graph is burnt, we again pick a uniform point and set it alight. We study this model in the setting of a random multigraph with N nodes of degree 3 and α(N) nodes of degree 4, where α(N)/N → 0 as N → ∞. We assume the edges to have i.i.d. standard exponential lengths. We are interested in the asymptotic behaviour of the number of fires we must set alight in order to burn the whole graph, and the number of points which are burnt from two different directions. Depending on whether α(N) » √N or not, we prove that after the suitable rescaling these quantities converge jointly in distribution to either a pair of constants or to (complicated) functionals of Brownian motion. Our analysis supports the conjecture that the difference between the size of a matching obtained by the Karp-Sipser algorithm and the size of a maximum matching of the Erdös-Rényi random graph G(n,M = ^cn/₂) for c > e, rescaled by n^1/5, converges in distribution.

We study combinatorial optimization problems on graphs in the mean-field model, which assigns independent and identically distributed random weights to the edges of the graph. Specifically, we focus on two generalizations of minimum weight matching on graphs. The first problem of minimum cost edge cover finds application in a computational linguistics problem of semantic projection. The second problem of minimum cost many-to-one matching appears as an intermediate optimization step in the restriction scaffold problem applied to shotgun sequencing of DNA. For the minimum cost edge cover on a complete graph on n vertices, where the edge weights are independent exponentially distributed random variables, we show that the expectation of the minimum cost converges to a constant as n →∞ For the minimum cost many-to-one matching on an n x m complete bipartite graph, scaling m as [ n/α ] for some fixed α > 1, we find the limit of the expected minimum cost as a function of α. For both problems, we show that a belief propagation algorithm converges asymptotically to the optimal solution. The belief propagation algorithm yields a near optimal solution with lesser complexity than the known best algorithms designed for optimality in worst-case settings. Our proofs use the machinery of the objective method and local weak convergence, which are ideas developed by Aldous for proving the ζ(2) limit for the minimum cost bipartite matching. We use belief propagation as a constructive proof technique to supplement the objective method. Recursive distributional equations(RDEs) arise naturally in the objective method approach. In a class of RDEs that arise as extensions of the minimum weight matching and travelling salesman problems, we prove existence and uniqueness of a fixed point distribution, and characterize its domain of attraction.

Recommendation systems are information filtering systems that help users effectively and efficiently explore large amount of information and identify items of interest. Accurate predictions of users' interests improve user satisfaction and are beneficial to business or service providers. Researchers have been making tremendous efforts to improve the accuracy of recommendations. Emerging trends of technologies and application scenarios, however, lead to challenges other than accuracy for recommendation systems. Three new challenges include: (1) opinion spam results in untrustworthy content and makes recommendations deceptive; (2) users prefer diversified content; (3) in some applications user behavior data may not be available to infer users' preference. This thesis tackles the above challenges. We identify features of untrustworthy commercial campaigns on a question and answer website, and adopt machine learning-based techniques to implement an adaptive detection system which automatically detects commercial campaigns. We incorporate diversity requirements into a classic theoretical model and develop efficient algorithms with performance guarantees. We propose a novel and robust approach to infer user preference profile from recommendations using copula models. The proposed approach can offer in-depth business intelligence for physical stores that depend on Wi-Fi hotspots for mobile advertisement. / Graduate / 0984 / cchenv@uvic.ca