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Consider the set $S = \binom{[n]}{2}$ of all the unordered couples formed by any two elements in $[n] = \{1,\ldots,n\}$, with $n \ge 4$.

Let $\mathcal{P}(S)$ be a partition of $S$ in at most $n$ parts.

Let $X_k(\mathcal{P}(S))$, $k \in [n]$ be a subset of $S$ of minimal size, with the following properties:

  1. $k \in X_k(\mathcal{P}(S))$;
  2. for any $x \in X_k(\mathcal{P}(S))$, if there exists $\{x,x'\} \in X \in \mathcal{P}(S)$, then for any $\{y,z\} \in X$, it must be $y \in X_k(\mathcal{P}(S))$ or $z \in X_k(\mathcal{P}(S))$.

Can we find an example of a partition such that:

$$\max_{1 \le k \le n} |X_k(\mathcal{P}(S))| \lt \Big\lfloor \frac{n+1}{2} \Big\rfloor \space \space ?$$

For example for $n=4$ and $\mathcal{P}(S) = \{\{\{1,2\},\{2,4\}\},\{\{1,3\},\{3,4\}\},\{\{1,4\}\},\{\{2,3\}\}\}$ we have $X_1(\mathcal{P}(S)) = \{1,4\}$, $X_2(\mathcal{P}(S)) = \{2\}$, $X_3(\mathcal{P}(S)) = \{3\}$, $X_4(\mathcal{P}(S)) = \{1,4\}$ and the maximum is $2 = \lfloor (n+1)/2 \rfloor$.

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1 Answer 1

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I think the partition $$ \mathcal{P}(S)=\{\{\{1,2\},\{1,3\},\{2,3\}\},\{\{1,4\},\{1,5\}\},\{\{2,4\},\{2,5\}\},\{\{3,4\},\{3,5\}\},\{\{4,5\}\}\} $$

works as an example:

graph showing counterexample

We have max_k |X_k| = 2, but floor((n+1)/2) = 3.

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  • $\begingroup$ Did you get it by hand or with some program? $\endgroup$ Commented 13 hours ago
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    $\begingroup$ Always with programs. :-) Usually for n<=5 or 6 an exhaustive search is feasible and then beyond that I do different kinds of random search. $\endgroup$ Commented 12 hours ago

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