1. Discrepancy and sparsity.
- Author
-
Grobler, Mario, Jiang, Yiting, Ossona de Mendez, Patrice, Siebertz, Sebastian, and Vigny, Alexandre
- Subjects
- *
FIRST-order logic , *GRAPH coloring , *SUBGRAPHS - Abstract
We study the connections between the notions of combinatorial discrepancy and graph degeneracy. In particular, we prove that the maximum discrepancy over all subgraphs H of a graph G of the neighborhood set system of H is sandwiched between Ω (log deg (G)) and O (deg (G)) , where deg (G) denotes the degeneracy of G. We extend this result to inequalities relating weak coloring numbers and discrepancy of graph powers and deduce a new characterization of bounded expansion classes. Then we switch to a model theoretical point of view, introduce pointer structures, and study their relations to graph classes with bounded expansion. We deduce that a monotone class of graphs has bounded expansion if and only if all the set systems definable in this class have bounded hereditary discrepancy. Using known bounds on the VC-density of set systems definable in nowhere dense classes we also give a characterization of nowhere dense classes in terms of discrepancy. As consequences of our results, we obtain a corollary on the discrepancy of neighborhood set systems of edge colored graphs, a polynomial-time algorithm to compute ε -approximations of size O (1 / ε) for set systems definable in bounded expansion classes, an application to clique coloring, and even the non-existence of a quantifier elimination scheme for nowhere dense classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF