Inspired by empirical studies of networked systems such as the Internet, social networks, and biological networks, researchers have in recent years developed a variety of techniques and models to help us understand or predict the behavior of these systems. Here we review developments in this field, including such concepts as the small-world effect, degree distributions, clustering, network correlations, random graph models, models of network growth and preferential attachment, and dynamical processes taking place on networks.

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The Structure and Function of Complex Networks

The use of randomness is now an accepted tool in Theoretical Computer Science but not everyone is aware of the underpinnings of this methodology in Combinatorics - particularly, in what is now called the probabilistic Method as developed primarily by Paul Erdoős over the past half century. Here I will explore a particular set of problems - all dealing with “good” colorings of an underlying set of points relative to a given family of sets. A central point will be the evolution of these problems from the purely existential proofs of Erdős to the algorithmic aspects of much interest to this audience.

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The Probabilistic Method

Convergence of Probability Measures. By P. Billingsley. Chichester, Sussex, Wiley, 1968. xii, 253 p. 9 1/4“. 117s.

Convergence of Probability Measures

We review the recent rapid progress in the statistical physics of evolving networks. Interest has focused mainly on the structural properties of complex networks in communications, biology, social sciences and economics. A number of giant artificial networks of this kind have recently been created, which opens a wide field for the study of their topology, evolution, and the complex processes which occur in them. Such networks possess a rich set of scaling properties. A number of them are scale-free and show striking resilience against random breakdowns. In spite of the large sizes of these networks, the distances between most of their vertices are short - a feature known as the 'small-world' effect. We discuss how growing networks self-organize into scale-free structures, and investigate the role of the mechanism of preferential linking. We consider the topological and structural properties of evolving networks, and percolation and disease spread on these networks. We present a number of models demonstrat...

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Evolution of networks

We survey the current techniques to cope with the problem of string matching that allows errors. This is becoming a more and more relevant issue for many fast growing areas such as information retrieval and computational biology. We focus on online searching and mostly on edit distance, explaining the problem and its relevance, its statistical behavior, its history and current developments, and the central ideas of the algorithms and their complexities. We present a number of experiments to compare the performance of the different algorithms and show which are the best choices. We conclude with some directions for future work and open problems.

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A guided tour to approximate string matching

Random Graphs

Bootstrap percolation on the random graph C-n,C-p is a process of spread of "activation" on a given realization of the graph with a given number of initially active nodes. At each step those vertices which have not been active but have at least r >= 2 active neighbors become active as well. We study the size A* of the final active set. The parameters of the model are, besides r (fixed) and n (tending to infinity), the size a = a(n) of the initially active set and the probability p = p(n) of the edges in the graph. We show that the model exhibits a sharp phase transition: depending on the parameters of the model, the final size of activation with a high probability is either n - o(n) or it is o(n). We provide a complete description of the phase diagram on the space of the parameters of the model. In particular, we find the phase transition and compute the asymptotics (in probability) for A*; we also prove a central limit theorem for A* in some ranges. Furthermore, we provide the asymptotics for the number of steps until the process stops.

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Bootstrap percolation on the random graph Gn;p

For 0 0 there exists a constantC=C(η) such that almost every random graphGn,p withp=p(n)≥Cn−2/5 satisfiesGn,p→2/3+ηK4 The proof makes use of a variant of Szemeredi's regularity lemma for sparse graphs and is based on a certain superexponential estimate for the number of pseudo-random tripartite graphs whose triangles are not too well distributed Related results and a general conjecture concerningH-free subgraphs of random graphs in the spirit of the Erdős-Stone theorem are discussed

OnK 4-free subgraphs of random graphs

A practical suboptimal (variable source coding) algorithm for lossy data compression is presented. This scheme is based on approximate string matching, and it naturally extends the lossless Lempel-Ziv (1977) data compression scheme. Among others we consider the typical length of an approximately repeated pattern within the first n positions of a stationary mixing sequence where D percent of mismatches is allowed. We prove that there exists a constant r/sub 0/(D) such that the length of such an approximately repeated pattern converges in probability to 1/r/sub 0/(D) log n (pr.) but it almost surely oscillates between 1/r/sub -/spl infin//(D) log n and 2/r/sub 1/(D) log n, where r/sub -/spl infin//(D)>r/sub 0/(D)>r/sub 1/(D)/2 are some constants. These constants are natural generalizations of Renyi entropies to the lossy environment. More importantly, we show that the compression ratio of a lossy data compression scheme based on such an approximate pattern matching is asymptotically equal to r/sub 0/(D). We also establish the asymptotic behavior of the so-called approximate waiting time N/sub l/ which is defined as the time until a pattern of length C repeats approximately for the first time. We prove that log N/sub l//l/spl rarr/r/sub 0/(D) (pr.) as l/spl rarr//spl infin/. In general, r/sub 0/(D)>R(D) where R(D) is the rate distortion function. Thus for stationary mixing sequences we settle in the negative the problem investigated by Steinberg and Gutman by showing that a lossy extension of the Wyner-Ziv (1989) scheme cannot be optimal.

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Tomasz Luczak

Papers

Random Graphs

Bootstrap percolation on the random graph Gn;p

OnK 4-free subgraphs of random graphs

A suboptimal lossy data compression based on approximate pattern matching

A note on the sharp concentration of the chromatic number of random graphs