13

Chapter
The Probabilistic Method in
Combinatorics

13.1 Counting with Probability 13.3 First Moment Principle

13.2 Probabilistic Method Examples 13.4 Conclusion

13.1 Counting with Probability

We began our journey into probability with the notion of counting, enumerating ob-
jects and events within a sample space. In this section, we will be bringing probability
full circle, and looking at how we can use concepts in probability to tackle challenging
counting problems.

As we were building our early intuition and understanding of probability, we

came upon a few concepts in combinatorics, such as permutations and combinations.
In fact, we first defined probability through the notion of counting objects, where
we found the probability of an event by enumerating the number of outcomes in
the event, and then comparing it to the total number of outcomes. It thus comes
as no surprise that the two concepts - Probability and Enumeration - have much
in common, so much so that certain concepts in Probability can be used to tackle
difficult counting problems, and even prove the existence of objects that are too
difficult for us to construct. But to build up to that, let’s first begin understanding
how we can connect these two concepts.

Understanding the Intuition

To build an intuition about how the probability of an event relates to the existence
of outcomes, we explore some very simple examples.
Example Drawing Colours. Imagine you were given a bag which contained some balls of certain
13.1.1 colours, and you do not know the specific contents of the balls. However, you were
told that the probability of you drawing a green ball is 0.2. Let G be the number of
Green Balls, and T be the total number of balls. Then,
G
Pr(Draw Green Ball) = = 0.2,
T
⇒ G = 0.2 · T > 0.

Thus, we can conclude that there must exist at least 1 green ball in the bag. ◭
YSC2230 The Probabilistic Method in Combinatronics Khwa Zhong Xuan

Example Drawing Shapes. Now consider a bag of coloured shapes, the contents of which you
13.1.2 too do not know. However, you were told that the probability that the shape you
draw will be blue is 0.5, and the probability of you drawing a cube is 0.6. Let B be
the event that the shape you drew was blue, C be the event that you drew a cube
and Ω be the sample space. We know from Equation 1.5.1 [1] that

Pr(B ∪ C) = Pr(B) + Pr(C) − Pr(B ∩ C).

Since we also know that P (B ∪ C) ≤ 1,

|B ∩ C|
Pr(B ∩ C) = ≥ 0.1,
|Ω|
|B ∩ C| ≥ 0.1|Ω| ≥ 0.

Thus, we can conclude that there must exist at least 1 blue cube in the bag. ◭

The examples that were just discussed may have results that seem incredibly obvi-
ous, but they capture the essence of how probability is used to prove the existence
of objects. This seemingly straightforward idea forms the basis of the Probabilistic
Method, which is an incredibly powerful tool that is widely used in numerous fields,
such as Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Number Theory.

The Probabilistic Method

The Probabilistic Method is a methodology that was initiated and developed by
Hungarian Mathematician Paul Erdős, one of the most prolific mathematicians of
the 20th century. The basic idea is as follows: in order to prove that a certain
structure which has a desired property exists, we define an appropriate sample space
of structures and show that the desired properties hold in this space with positive
probability. [2]
This concept, while appearing to be quite simple, has lead to many non-trivial
discoveries over the last century, and has proven itself to be highly applicable in
many fields. One of its greatest strength lies in the fact that it is a nonconstructive
method of proving the existence of objects, which means that it proves that a type
of object exists without having to construct an actual example of it, which is often
one of the most difficult things to do when dealing with complicated structures.
In this chapter, we will visit some basic applications of the Probabilistic Method,
and see how certain probabilisitic concepts we’ve studied in this course can be applied
to complicated counting problems.

Some Helpful Terminology

In our exploration of the probabilistic method, we will be making use of some combi-
natorial objects to see how the method is applied. As such, we will define some basic
terms here, which will aid in the understanding of the examples in this chapter.
Definition Graphs. A Graph is a pair G = (V, E) such that E ⊆ V 2 , i.e. E consists of 2-
13.1.1 element subsets of V . The elements of V are known as vertices and the elements
of E are called edges. A graph often represented visually by drawing each vertex
as a point, and for each edge, drawing a line between the two vertices contained
within the edge. [3] A vertex is adjacent to another vertex if there is an edge that

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connects the two vertices. The degree of a vertex is the number of vertices it is
adjacent to. A subgraph G′ of a graph G is defined as G′ = (V ′ , E ′ ) where V ′ ⊆ V
and E ′ ⊆ E such that any edge in e consists of 2 vertices in V ′ .
Definition Graph Descriptors. A simple graph is a graph that has no repeated edges, and by
13.1.2 default, all graphs are simple. A graph is said to be directed if the edges are treated
as ordered pairs, which means that we care about the direction in which the edges
are going. Normally, for u, v ∈ V , we denote the directed edge (u, v) by drawing an
arrow going from u to v. On the other hand, a graph is undirected if we do not
care about the direction. A graph is said to be connected if none of the vertices
have a degree of 0, and a graph is fully connected if all vertices are adjacent to
every other vertex, i.e. for a graph with n vertices, all vertices have degree n − 1.
An undirected, fully connected simple graph with n vertices is called a complete
graph, and is denoted as Kn .
Definition Traversing Graphs. If we imagined vertices as towns and edges as roads, where undi-
13.1.3 rected edges are two-way roads and directed edges are one-way, we can intuitively
understand the idea of a graph traversal. A traversal can thus be seen as going
from a starting vertex, travelling along the edges, and reaching an end vertex. A
path is a traversal that pass through each vertex at most once, and the length of
a path is the number of vertices it traverses. A cycle is a path that starts and ends
in the same vertex. Lastly, a hamiltonian path is a path that traverses through all
the vertices in the graph.

13.2 Probabilistic Method Examples

In this section, we will see how the probabilistic method is applied some simple, but
non-trivial examples. We also look at how certain theorems in probability play a role
in the solutions we produce. Finally, we introduce the notion of a Random Graph,
which is largely used when applying the Probabilistic Method to problems in Graph
Theory.

Paradoxical Tournaments
Example Rock-Paper-Scissors. Imagine a hypothetical group of friends coming together to
13.2.1 play a big game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. They play it round-robin style, such that
each player would have played a match against every other player, and they played
each match to completion, such that between any pair of players, one of them is
the winner. At the end of the competition, we get a result, which is a collection of
wins and loses based on the matches played. Normally, a player who wins all games
will be crowned the champion. However, sometimes this may not be possible. We
say that a result is 1-paradoxical if every player loses to at least 1 person, and in
general, we say that a result is k-paradoxical if for any group of k players, we can
always find another player outside of the group who has beaten all k players in the
group.
Finding a 1-paradoxical game is very simple. All we need are 3 players, A, B
and C, such that A won B, B won C and C won A. In this situation, for any player
we select, we can find someone who has beaten them.
While the example of a 1-paradoxical game is relatively simple to find, once we
try to find an example of a 2-paradoxical game, we can see that it starts to get

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complicated. Figure 1 shows an example of one such result. Note that the figure
makes use of a directed graph to visually show the results, where each player is
represented by vertex, and the results are represented by an arrow, or a directed
edge, that goes from the winning player to the losing player. As can be observed,
the example needed 7 players to construct a 2-paradoxical result, and 7 is indeed
the minimum number of players you need for this to be possible. ◭

p1 p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 p6 p7
p1 p7 p6 p7 p4 p4 p6
p7 p2 p2 p7 p1 p7 p1 p5 p5
p3 p6 p1 p2 p1 p2 p6
p4 p7 p7 p2 p3 p2 p3
p6 p3 p5 p4 p1 p1 p3 p4 p3
p6 p4 p5 p2 p2 p4 p5
p7 p6 p5 p6 p3 p3 p5
p5 p4 (px,y beats px and py .)

Figure 1: An example of a 2-paradoxical result.

Expanding on the results of Example 13.2.1, one may be interested in finding

out if it is possible to come up with a situation that is k-paradoxical for any value
of k ∈ N, and if so, how big a group of players is needed in order to guarantee that
we will be able to find such a situation. Trying to answer this question by finding
a specific example gets increasingly more difficult as k increases. Thus, in order to
answer this question, we formalise the problem we are dealing with, and make use
of the probabilistic method to come up with an answer.
Definition Tournaments. A tournament is a directed graph G = (V, E) with n vertices that is
13.2.1 fully connected, with only 1 edge going between any pair of vertices, i.e. for any
u, v ∈ V , either (u, v) or (v, u) is an element of E, but not both. A tournament is
said to have the property Sk if for any k-subset of vertices, we can always find a
vertex that has a directed edge going into all the elements in the subset.
󰀃 󰀄
Theorem Upper bound for Sk . If nk (1 − 2−2 )n−k < 1, then there is a tournament on n vertices
13.2.1 that has the property Sk . [2] 󰃈

Proof. We define a random tournament as such: take a graph G = (V, E) and for
all possible 2-element subsets (v1 , v2 ) where, v1 , v2 ∈ V , we flip a coin. If it lands
on heads, we add the directed edge (v1 , v2 ) to G, and if it lands on tails, we add
the directed edge (v2 , v1 ) instead. This means that, between any u, v ∈ V , the
probability that there is an edge going from u to v is 0.5. For convenience, we will
say that u beats v if there is an edge going from u to v.
Now, consider a random tournament with n vertices. For every fixed subset K
of size k of V , let NK be the event that there is no vertex that all the members in
K. For any vertex v ∈ V − K, the probability that v does not beat all of the vertices
in K is 1 − Pr(v beats all vertices) = 1 − 2−k . Multiply this by all n − k vertices in
V − K, we then get
Pr(AK ) = (1 − 2−k )n−k .
Recall the Bonferroni’s Inequality (Theorem 1.5.8) [1], which states that for

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all events A1 , · · · , An , we have

󰀣 n
󰀤 n
󰁞 󰁛
Pr Ai ≤ Pr(Ai ).
i=1 i=1

Thus, it follows that

󰀳 󰀴
󰀣 󰀤
󰁅 󰁞 󰁆 󰁛 n
Pr 󰁅
󰁃 AK 󰁆
󰁄≤ Pr(AK ) = (1 − 2−2 )n−k < 1.
K⊂V K⊂V
k
|K|=k |K|=k

To find the probability that no event AK occurs, all we need to find is

󰀳 󰀴 󰀳 󰀴
󰁅 󰁟 󰁆 󰁅 󰁞 󰁆
Pr 󰁅
󰁃 󰁄 = 1 − Pr 󰁃
AcK 󰁆 󰁅
󰁄 > 0.
AK 󰁆
K⊂V K⊂V
|K|=k |K|=k

Therefore, with positive probability, no event AK occurs, which means there is a

tournament on n vertices that satisfies Sk .
󰀃 󰀄
What does this mean? We can make use of 2 commonly known bounds, nk <
( en
k ) and (1 − p) < e
k m −mp [4], to show that for any k, it is always possible to form

a tournament with property Sk .

Corollary Existence of Sk Tournament. Let mk be the minimum number of vertices of a tour-
13.2.1 nament with property Sk . Then, mk ≤ k 2 · 2k · (ln2)(1 + o(1)). 󰃈
󰀃 󰀄 −k n−k < e−(n−k)/2 . From Theorem
Proof. We know that nk < ( en k ) and (1 − 2 )
k k

2
13.2.1, it thus follows that mk ≤ k · 2 · (ln2)(1 + o(1)). o(1) means that as k → ∞,
k

o(1) → 0.

Since we have found a finite upper bound for Sk , we can conclude that it is definitely
possible to form a k-paradoxical tournament for any given k ∈ N.

Theorem on Friends and Strangers

Example The 6-People Party Problem. There are 6 people in a party, and as an external
13.2.2 observer, you do not know whether these 6 people know each other, or not. However,
you can always safely say that you will be able to find 3 of the people in the party
who are either all mutually friends, which means that they all know each other, or
are all mutually strangers, meaning that they all do not know each other. Why is
this the case?
Let’s pick one of the party-goers, and name them A. Since there are 5 other
people at the party, A either knows 3 of them, or does not know 3 of them. Let’s
assume, without loss of generality, that A knows 3 other people at the party, B, C
and D. Now, if any two of B, C or D, know each other, then, with A, we will be
able to find a group of 3 people who mutually know each other. If such a pair can
not be found, then B, C and D all mutually do not know each other, and as such,
form a group of 3 mutual strangers. ◭

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Definition Ramsey’s Theorem. The 6-people party problem is a famous application of Ram-
13.2.2 sey’s Theorem, which state that for any 2 integers k, l ≥ 2, there exist a (minimal)
positive integer R(k, l), known as a Ramsey Number, such that if we were to
colour the edges of a complete graph with R(k, l) vertices, then we will either get a
Kk subgraph made up of red edges, or a Kl subgraph of blue edges. [5]
We’ve shown in Example 13.2.2 that R(3, 3) is 6, and we also have the trivial
R(2, 2) = 2, since that corresponds to a graph with 2 vertices and only 1 edge.
There is an easy proof that R(4, 4) is 18, which we do not need to go through. The
only important thing is that for k ≥ 5, the exact value of R(k, k) is not known! This
is still a famous unsolved problem in the field of Ramsey theory, and mathematicians
are still working on improving the lower and upper bounds for the Ramsey numbers.
Here, the probabilistic method appears yet again, as Paul Erdős had discovered the
classical lower bound to the Ramsey number, which is today still the best general
estimate for the lower bound of R(k, k).
Theorem Lower Bound for Ramsey Number. For all k ≥ 3, k ∈ N, the inequality R(k, k) > 2k/2
13.2.2 holds. [5] 󰃈

Proof. We define our sample space by taking a complete graph on n vertices, G =

Kn , and randomly colouring all the edges either red or blue, each with an equal
probability of 0.5.
Note that as we are proving for a lower bound of R(k, k), we are showing that
when n = 2k/2 , there exists a 2-colouring of the edges in G such that there are no
monochromatic Kk -subsets in G. 󰀃 󰀄
We take a look at any Kk -subgraph of G, which has k2 edges. Therefore, the
total number of ways to colour the edges of a K subgraph red or blue is 2(2) , since
k
k
there are 2 choices per edge. Of these choices, only 2 are monochromatic. Let AS
be the event that a Kk -subgraph S of G is monochromatic. Therefore,
2
= 21−(k) .
2
Pr(AS ) =
2(2)
k

󰀃 󰀄
There are a total of nk ways to pick a Kk -subgraph from G. We apply the Bonferonni
Inequality again to show
󰀣 󰀤 󰀣 󰀤
󰁞 󰁛 n 1−(2)
Pr AS ≤ Pr(AS ) = 2 k ,
S S
k

where S ranges through all Kk -subsets

󰀃n 󰀄
of G. Substituting n ≤ 2k/2 into the equation
above, and using the fact that k < k! , we thus get the inequality
nk

󰀣 󰀤 2
n 1−(2) nk 1−(k) 2 · 2k /2 2k/2
2 k < ·2 2 ≤ = 2 · < 1,
k!2(2)
k
k k! k!

for all k ≥ 3. Therefore, the probability that no event AS happens, i.e. there are no
monochromatic Kk -subgraphs, is
󰀣 󰀤 󰀣 󰀤
󰁟 󰁞
Pr AcS = 1 − Pr AS > 0.
S S

Since the probability is strictly more than 0, there must exist such a colouring when
n = 2k/2 .

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We have so far shown 2 examples in which the probabilistic method has been
useful in tackling some difficult counting problems. In both cases, we created our
sample space by defining graphs and randomly applying a restriction on their edges.
Such a method is commonly found when using the probabilistic method to tackle
problems in Graph Theory. As such, we now define a general method for applying
probability to edges.
Definition Random Graphs. A random graph G(n, p) is a randomly constructed graph with
13.2.3 n vertices, where each possible edge is added with a probability of p. Thus, The
probability space of random graphs G(n, p) is the finite probability space of all
graphs on a fixed set of n vertices, and the probability of a graph with m edges is
pm (1 − p)( 2 )−m . [4].
n

Summary
In this section, we begin exploring the usefulness of the probabilistic method in enu-
merating complicated combinatorial objects. Although the idea behind the method
is simple, it is also incredibly powerful, and can be used to prove the existence of
objects that are almost impossible to construct. In summary, the most important
takeaway from this section would be that for any property p, where the event Ap
is the event that an object in the sample space has property p, if Pr(Ap ) > 0, then
there must exist an outcome that satisfies p.

13.3 First Moment Principle

In the previous section, we saw how basic probability theory and concepts like Bon-
ferroni’s Inequality could be used to prove the existence of specific structures. In this
section, we will see how the notion of expected values become powerful tools in the
probabilistic method.
Example Back to Tournaments. We are again interested in structures that exist within tour-
13.3.1 naments. Normally, in a tournament, we could say that a player a is better than
another player b if player a beat player b in their match. We can then imagine find-
ing such a chain of comparisons between all players, by chaining them in a certain
order where the player is beaten by the player that comes before him, and beats the
one that comes after, thereby coming up with a “best” and “worst” player. We can
also imagine that such an ordering might not be strict, as we may be able to find
more than one of such chains that gives a different order of players. We might then
be interested to see, for any given tournament with n vertices, if we could definitely
find such a chain, and if so, what the largest number of chains that could exist in a
tournament with n vertices is.
In Graph Theory terms, the first question is equivalent to asking if you are able
to find a hamiltonian path in any tournament of size n. This is actually very easy
to prove, and can be shown inductively. But, if we were to instead ask what is
the largest number of hamiltonian paths that could exist within a tournament of n
vertices, the problem becomes significantly harder, especially as n gets big. While
the answer to this question is again, still open, we are able to easily find a simple
lower bound using the Probabilistic Method. ◭

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Expected Values and the First Moment Principle

Here, we revisit the notion of expected values, which are very important and powerful
tools for proving the existence of structures. This is due to the First Moment
Principle.
Theorem First Moment Principle. In a finite sample space, and for a discrete random variable
13.3.1 X, if E(X) ≤ t, then Pr(X ≤ t) > 0. 󰃈

Proof. Intuitively, this makes sense. If E(X) ≤ t, then there has to be some Xi
which is also at most t. Thus, the probability that P r(X ≤ t) has to be positive.
Formally, since the sample space is finite, X can only take on a finite set V of
󰁓
values. Recall again that E(X) = v∈V v · P r(X = v). If Pr(X ≤ t) = 0, then we
can conclude that
󰁛 󰁛
E(X) = v · Pr(X = v) > t · Pr(X = v) = t.
v∈V v∈V
v>t v>t

Therefore, we’ve shown that if Pr(X ≤ t) = 0, then (E(X) > t, which is the same
as proving the theorem. [6]

From the First Moment Principle, we also get some other useful inequalities.
Corollary Other Forms of First Moment Principle. From Theorem 13.3.1, we can obtain the
13.3.1 following inequalities.

• If E(X) ≥ t, then Pr(X ≥ t) > 0.

• If E(X) < t, then Pr(X < t) > 0.

• If E(X) > t, then Pr(X > t) > 0. 󰃈

However, as we reintroduce the expected value, we should then be interested in

seeing what type of random variables we could define when tackling a combinatoric
problem. One such useful type of random variable is the Indicator Variable.
Definition Indicator Variables. For an event A, we define the indicator variable IA as:
13.3.1 󰀫
1 if ω ∈ A, and
IA (ω) =
0 if ω ∈
/ A.

Note that, since Pr(IA = 1) = Pr(A) and Pr(IA = 0) = Pr(Ac ), we can conclude
that E(IA ) = 1 · Pr(IA = 1) + 0 · Pr(IA = 0) = Pr(A). [4]
We can now go on to address the question we set up in Example 13.3.1, which
is to find the lower bound to the maximum number of hamiltonian paths that could
exist in a tournament with n vertices.
Theorem Hamiltonian Paths in Tournaments. There exists a tournament T with n vertices that
13.3.2 contains at least 2n−1
n!
Hamiltonian Paths. 󰃈

Proof. We consider a random tournament T = (V, E) with n vertices, with proper-

ties the same as that defined in the proof of Theorem 13.2.1. Which means, given
any u, v ∈ V , the probability of the directed (u, v) being in E is exactly 0.5. We
can consider a permutation P = {p1 , p2 , . . . , pn }, pi ∈ V for all i ∈ {1, . . . , n} where

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pi ∕= pj if i ∕= j, as a proposed hamiltonian path in T , where it is only valid if all

edges (pi , pi+1 ) for 1 ≤ i < n, are contained in E.
We let X denote the total number of Hamiltonian Paths in T , and denote IP as
the indicator variable for the event that P is a Hamiltonian Path in T . Thus, we
can see that 󰁛
X= IP .
∀P ∈T

For a path P to be a Hamiltonian Path in T , we need to make sure all n − 1 edges in

P belong in E. Therefore, the probability that a random P is a Hamiltonian Path
1
in T is 2n−1 . Since there are n! possible permutations on the vertices in T , then we
can conclude that
󰁛 n!
E(X) = E(IP ) = n! · Pr(Ip ) = .
∀P ∈T
2n−1

Therefore, the
󰀓
inequality
󰀔
E(X) ≥ n!
2n−1
holds, and as such, from the first moment
principle, Pr X ≥ n!
2n−1
> 0. We can thus conclude from the positive probability
that there must exist a tournament with n vertices and at least n!
2n−1
Hamiltonian
Paths. [7]

This result, while incredibly simple, should not be seen as a trivial lower bound.
It was first shown by mathematician T. Szele in 1943, and was considered one of
the first applications of what is now known as the Probabilistic Method. This lower
bound was only improved by a constant factor 40 years later by Noga Alon [8], which
built on the work of Szele.

Markov’s Inequality and Graph Colourings

We can thus see how powerful the first moment principle is in dealing with extremely
complicated problems in combinatorics. We will now explore another famous exam-
ple, which has to do with graph colouring.
Definition Graph Colouring. One of the things that we can do with the vertices of a graph is to
13.3.2 assign them certain properties. A colouring of a graph is when you assign a colour
to each vertex, such that any adjacent vertices are not coloured the same colour. A
chromatic number of a graph, normally denoted as χ(G), is the smallest number
of colours needed to get a valid colouring of the graph.
The chromatic number of a graph is something often studied in Graph Theory.
One can see that it is very easy to construct a graph with a high a chromatic number
- in fact, to get a graph with χ(G) = n, all we need is a complete graph Kn , where
all vertices are connected to every other vertex, and such, each vertex needs their
own colour. However, this solution depends very much on graph having a small
girth, which we define as the number of vertices in the smallest cycle of the graph,
commonly denoted as γ(G). Complete graphs have a γ(G) of 3, which corresponds
to the subgraph K3 existing inside the graph.

As you can imagine, if we were to restrict the girth of a graph, it takes more
effort to come up with a structure with a high chromatic number. Figure 2 shows
a way to get a chromatic number of 4, when you restrict the girth of a graph to be
more than 3.

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Figure 2: Graph with χ(G) = 4 and γ(G) = 4.

With this in mind, it does raise the question - for an arbitrarily large restriction
in girth, is it still possible to get a high chromatic number? In other words, for any
arbitrarily large k ∈ N, could we construct a graph with γ(G) = k and chromatic
number χ(G) = k? Turns out that an answer to this question can be found using
the probabilistic method.
Theorem High Girth and High Chromatic Number. For every k ≥ 2, there exists a graph G with
13.3.3 chromatic number χ(G) > k and girth γ(G) > k. 󰃈

Proof. We begin by defining our sample space on the set of all random graphs G(n, p)
on a fixed vertex V = {v1 , . . . , vn }, where
󰀃 󰀄
any edge has a uniform probability p of
being added to a graph. As there are n2 possible vertices, you can image each edge
as a Bernoulli trial, and the probability󰀃 󰀄
of getting a specific graph Gm with m edges
would be the same as the result of n2 Bernoulli trials with m successes, i.e.

Pr(Gm ) = pm (1 − p)( 2 )−m .

n

Firstly, we observe the chromatic number χ(G). We define α(G) as the inde-
pendence number of a graph, which refers to the largest set of vertices in G that
are independent from one another, i.e. there are no edges between any two mem-
bers of the independent set. Note that, if we pick all the vertices coloured with
the same colour and placed them in a set, this set has to be independent, as no
edge can exist between any two vertices of the same colour. Thus, we can see that
χ(G) · α(G) ≥ n. Knowing this, if we want to make our χ(G) larger, we would need
to reduce alpha(G).
For 2 ≤ r ≤ n, let the event AR be the event where a subgraph R in G which
contains r vertices is an independent set, and thus the probability of finding a specific
r-subset that is independent is Pr(AR ) = (1 − p)(2) . Now notice that if there all
r

possible subgraphs R in G are not independent, then α(G) must be below r. As

such, we can conclude that
󰀳 󰀴 󰀣 󰀤
󰁞 󰁛
(1 − p)(2)
n r
Pr(α(G) ≥ r) = Pr 󰁃 AR 󰁄 ≤ Pr(AR ) =
∀R∈G ∀R∈G
r

≤ nr (1 − p)( ) = (n(1 − p) 2 )r ≤ (ne−p(r−1)/2 )r ,

r r−1
2

where the last inequality is from the result that (1 − p) ≤ e−p for all values of p.

10
YSC2230 The Probabilistic Method in Combinatronics Khwa Zhong Xuan

k
For any fixed k > 0, we choose p = n− k+1 , and we want to show that for a large
enough n, 󰀕 󰀖
n 1
Pr α ≥ < . (1)
2k 2
1 1
Since n k+1 grows faster than log n, we can say that, for a large enough n, n k+1 ≥
1
6k log n. Since np = n1− k+1 = n k+1 , for the same n, we have p ≥ 6k logn n . For
k

r = ⌈ 2k
n
⌉, we get pr ≥ 3 log n, and hence,
󰀕 󰀖1
− pr p
− 32 log n 1 e 2
ne −p(r−1)/2
= ne 2 e ≤ ne
2 e =
2 ,
n
which converges to 0 as n → ∞. Thus, there exists a large enough n1 such that, for
all n ≥ n1 , (1) holds.
Putting this result aside, we now look at our next parameter, γ(G). Let i be a
positive integer such that 3 ≤ i < k, and A be a fixed i-subset of V . We can find the
total number of possible i-cycles on A by picking a fixed vertex to be the starting
and ending point of all the cycles, then permute the remaining (i − 1) vertices. Since
our graph is undirected, we also need to 󰀃divide
󰀄
it by 2. Therefore, there are (i−1)!
2
possible i-cycles in A. Since there are ni ways to pick A, the total number of
󰀃 󰀄
possible i-cycles in G is ni (i−1)!
2 . Since all i-cycles have i edges, the probability of
any i-cycle C appearing is pi .
We thus define X as the total number of cycles in G with length ≤ k. In order
for us to estimate X, we need to recall Markov’s Inequality (Theorem 6.2.1) [1],
which states that for any random variable X where P r(X ≥ 0) = 1, and t > 0, t ∈ R,
E(X)
Pr(X ≥ t) ≤ .
t
We define IC as the indicator variable for the event that a cycle C of length ≤ k
󰁓
can be found within G. By this definition, X = IC , and
󰀣 󰀤
k
󰁛 n (i − 1)! 1󰁛 k
1
E(X) = pi ≤ ni pi ≤ (k − 2)nk pk ,
i=3
i 2 2 i=3 2
1
where the last inequality is true as np = n k+1 ≥ 1. We now apply Markov’s
inequality with t = n2 , and get
󰀕 󰀖
n E(X) (np)k 1
Pr X ≥ ≤ ≤ (k − 2) = (k − 2)n− k+1 .
2 n/2 n
1
Since (k − 2)n− k+1 → 0 as n → ∞, we can find a n2 which is large enough such that
for all n ≥ n2 , 󰀕 󰀖
n 1
Pr X ≥ < . (2)
2 2
We are now finally ready to bring it all together. For n ≥ max(n1 , n2 ), equations
(1) and (2) tells us that
󰀃 󰀄
Pr (α(G) ≥ 2k )
n
∪ (X ≥ n2 ) ≤ Pr(α(G) ≥ 2k )
n
+ Pr(X ≥ n2 ) ≤ 1,

which means that, with positive probability, there exists a graph H on n vertices
with α(G) < 2k
n
and less than n2 cycles of length ≤ k. We then remove one vertex

11
YSC2230 The Probabilistic Method in Combinatronics Khwa Zhong Xuan

from each of these cycles to get H ′ , which thus has no cycles of length ≤ k, and
thus γ(H ′ ) > k. Since H ′ still contains more than n2 vertices, and satisfies α(G) ≤
n
α(H) < 2k , we thus have,

n/2 n n
χ(H ′ ) ≥ ≥ > = k.
α(G) 2α(H) n/k

We have thus found H ′ which proves the theorem. [9]

Summary
In this section, we explore more complicated examples in the probabilistic method,
and understand the role that expected values play in solving such problems. Most
importantly, we saw how the concept of the first moment principle made the notion
of expected values very useful tools to prove existence. We also got an intuition for
how to generate random variables through the use of indicator variables to aid with
the counting.

13.4 Conclusion
In this chapter, we began exploring how the probabilistic method brings in con-
cepts of probability into the world of combinatorics, and through defining appro-
priate sample spaces, and making use of certain concepts within probability, form
non-constructive proofs of the existence of certain structures, which are often too
difficult to construct. We have only covered a small portion of the whole scope
of the probabilistic method, but hopefully it was enough to convince you that the
applications are wide and the results are remarkable.

References
[1] Morris H. DeGroot and Mark J. Schervish. Probability and statistics. Pearson
Education Limited, 2014.

[2] Noga Alon and Joel H. Spencer. The Probabilistic Method, 3rd Edition. John
Wiley Sons, 2008.

[3] Reinhard Diestel. Graph theory. Springer, 2017.

[4] Jan Vondrak Jiri Matousek. The probabilistic method: Lecture notes. 2008.

[5] Bona Miklos and Richard P. Stanley. A Walk Through Combinatorics: an In-
troduction to Enumeration and Graph Theory. World Scientific Publishing Co.
Pte. Ltd., 3rd edition, 2011.

[6] F. Havet. Introduction to the probabilistic method.

[7] Anders Sune Pedersen. Notes on the probabilistic method. 2009.

[8] Noga Alon. The maximum number of hamiltonian paths in tournaments. Com-
binatorica, 10(4):319âĂŞ324, Dec 1990.

[9] Martin Aigner and Ziegler Guunter M. Proofs from the book. Springer, 2004.

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