Fiona Skerman

Modularity in random regular graphs and lattices

Abstract Given a graph G, the modularity of a partition of the vertex set measures the extent to which edge density is higher within parts than between parts; and the modularity of G is the maximum modularity of a partition. We give an upper bound on the modularity of r-regular graphs as a function of the edge expansion (or isoperimetric number) under the restriction that each part in our partition has a sub-linear numbers of vertices. This leads to results for random r-regular graphs. In particular we show the modularity of a random cubic graph partitioned into sub-linear parts is almost surely in the interval (0.66, 0.88). The modularity of a complete rectangular section of the integer lattice in a fixed dimension was estimated in Guimer et. al. [R. Guimera, M. Sales-Pardo and L.A. Amaral, Modularity from fluctuations in random graphs and complex networks, Phys. Rev. E 70 (2) (2004) 025101]. We extend this result to any subgraph of such a lattice, and indeed to more general graphs.

Avoider-enforcer star games

In this paper, we study (1 : b) Avoider-Enforcer games played on the edge set of the complete graph on n vertices. For every constant k≥3 we analyse the k-star game, where Avoider tries to avoid claiming k edges incident to the same vertex. We consider both versions of Avoider-Enforcer games — the strict and the monotone — and for each provide explicit winning strategies for both players. We determine the order of magnitude of the threshold biases fmonF, f-F and f+F, where F is the hypergraph of the game.

Permutations in Binary Trees and Split Trees

We investigate the number of permutations that occur in random node labellings of trees. This is a generalisation of the number of subpermutations occuring in a random permutation. It also generalises some recent results on the number of inversions in randomly labelled trees [Cai et al., 2017]. We consider complete binary trees as well as random split trees a large class of random trees of logarithmic height introduced by Devroye [Devroye, 1998]. Split trees consist of nodes (bags) which can contain balls and are generated by a random trickle down process of balls through the nodes. For complete binary trees we show that asymptotically the cumulants of the number of occurrences of a fixed permutation in the random node labelling have explicit formulas. Our other main theorem is to show that for a random split tree with high probability the cumulants of the number of occurrences are asymptotically an explicit parameter of the split tree. For the proof of the second theorem we show some results on the number of embeddings of digraphs into split trees which may be of independent interest.