The Mathematical Garden

 | Welcome  | Games  | Mathematical methods  | About us |
Games
Black and White
HEX
Magic
Mark Six
Recursion, Games and Strategy
SIM
the game
an example
a question
the proof
How to win
SIM and pigeonhole
Ramsey's Theorem

Ramsey's Theorem

For every coloring of the k-subsets of a sufficiently large set X, there is an s-element subsets of X whose k-subsets all have the same color.

Briefly, it says if a set is large enough, it must contain the structure you want.

Philosophically, it means that completely disorder is impossible when the set is large enough.

Application

How many terminals do we need in order to build a network with certain sub- networks ?

Department of Mathematics, HKU, 2010