CSE 713: Random Graphs and Applications Lecturer: Hung Q.

Ngo
SUNY at Buffalo, Fall 2003 Scribe: Dazhen Pan

Lecture 5: Linearity of Expectation

1 Linearity of Expectation
Theorem 1.1 (Linearity of Expectation Theorem).

E[c1 x1 + · · · + cn xn ] = c1 E[x1 ] + · · · + cn E[xn ]

2 Applications
Proposition 2.1. Let G be any graph with n vertices, m edges, then G contains a bipartite subgraph
with at least m
2 edges.

Proof. Place each vertex v ∈ V on either side of a bipartite graph with probability 12 .
Let (
1 if e is not crossing the two sides
Ie =
0 if e is crossing
Then we have
X X X 1 m
E[#edges crossing] = E[ Ie ] = E[Ie ] = P r[Ie = 1] = |E| =
2 2
e∈E e∈E e∈E

Remark 2.2. To show the existence of ≥ k(or ≤ k) objects with certain property, we can show

E[# of such objects] = k

n
21−a monochromatic


Proposition 2.3. For complete graph Kn , there exists a 2-coloring with at least a
Ka .

Proof. Let S be the set of all Ka in Kn , for all s ∈ S, let

(
0 if s is not mono.
Is =
1 if s is mono.

Consequently,  
X X X 2 n 1−a
E[# mono. Ka ] = E[ Is ] = E[Is ] = a
= 2
2 a
s∈S s∈S e∈E

Proposition 2.4 (Balancing Vectors). Given n vectors v1 , . . . , vn , where |vi | = 1 for all i. We have
√
1. ∃1 , . . . , n ∈ {−1, 1}, such that, |1 v1 , . . . , n vn | ≤ n

1
 √
2. ∃1 , . . . , n ∈ {−1, 1}, such that, |1 v1 , . . . , n vn | ≥ n

Proof. Pick i ∈ {−1, 1} with probability 21 .

X
E[|1 v1 , . . . , n vn |2 ] = E[ i j vi vj ]
i,j
X X
= E[ 2i vi2 ] + E[ i j vi vj ]
i i6=j
X
=n+ E[vi vj ]E[i j ]
i6=j

=n+0
=n

Definition 2.5 (List Coloring). Given a graph G = (V, E) and, for every v ∈ V , a list L(v) of colors,
construct a valid vertex coloring of G such that each vertex v receives a color from its color list L(v).

Proposition 2.6. Given bipartite graph G with n vertices, and assign every v ∈ V a color list L(v).
Then G is list-colorable if |L(v)| > log2 n for every v.

Proof. Let C = v L(v) the set of all colors. ∀v, put c on either side of G with probability 12 . A vertex
S
v is a “bad vertex” if all the colors in L(v) are assigned to the other side. If there is no “bad vertex”, we
can always find a valid coloring by coloring v with a color c ∈ L(v) which is not assigned to the other
side. X 1
X n
E[# “bad vertices”] = P r[v is a bad vertex] = |L(v)|
< log n = 1
v v
2 2 2
So there is no “bad vertex” when |L(v)| > log2 n for every v.