Answering a question raised by Dudek and Prałat, we show that if pn → ∞, w.h.p., whenever G = G(n, p) is 2-edge-coloured there is a monochromatic path of length (2/3 + o(1))n. This result is optimal in the sense that 2/3 cannot be replaced by a larger constant.

As part of the proof we obtain the following result. Given a graph G on n vertices with at least $(1-\varepsilon)\binom{n}{2}$ edges, whenever G is 2-edge-coloured, there is a monochromatic path of length at least $(2/3 - 110\sqrt{\varepsilon})n$. This is an extension of the classical result by Gerencsér and Gyárfás which says that whenever Kn is 2-coloured there is a monochromatic path of length at least 2n/3.

A long-standing conjecture of Richter and Thomassen states that the total number of intersection points between any n simple closed Jordan curves in the plane, so that any pair of them intersect and no three curves pass through the same point, is at least (1−o(1))n 2.

We confirm the above conjecture in several important cases, including the case (1) when all curves are convex, and (2) when the family of curves can be partitioned into two equal classes such that each curve from the first class touches every curve from the second class. (Two closed or open curves are said to be touching if they have precisely one point in common and at this point the two curves do not properly cross.)

An important ingredient of our proofs is the following statement. Let S be a family of n open curves in ℝ2, so that each curve is the graph of a continuous real function defined on ℝ, and no three of them pass through the same point. If there are nt pairs of touching curves in S, then the number of crossing points is $\Omega(nt\sqrt{\log t/\log\log t})$ .

In Achlioptas processes, starting from an empty graph, in each step two potential edges are chosen uniformly at random, and using some rule one of them is selected and added to the evolving graph. The evolution of the rescaled size of the largest component in such variations of the Erdős–Rényi random graph process has recently received considerable attention, in particular for Bollobás's ‘product rule’. In this paper we establish the following result for rules such as the product rule: the limit of the rescaled size of the ‘giant’ component exists and is continuous provided that a certain system of differential equations has a unique solution. In fact, our result applies to a very large class of Achlioptas-like processes.

Our proof relies on a general idea which relates the evolution of stochastic processes to an associated system of differential equations. Provided that the latter has a unique solution, our approach shows that certain discrete quantities converge (after appropriate rescaling) to this solution.

Let p1, p2, p3 be three noncollinear points in the plane, and let P be a set of n other points in the plane. We show that the number of distinct distances between p1, p2, p3 and the points of P is Ω(n6/11), improving the lower bound Ω(n0.502) of Elekes and Szabó [4] (and considerably simplifying the analysis).

The 3-uniform tight cycle Cs3 has vertex set ${\mathbb Z}_s$ and edge set {{i, i + 1, i + 2}: i ∈ ${\mathbb Z}_s$}. We prove that for every s ≢ 0 (mod 3) with s ⩾ 16 or s ∈ {8, 11, 14} there is a cs > 0 such that the 3-uniform hypergraph Ramsey number r(Cs3, Kn3) satisfies

$$\begin{equation*} r(C_s^3, K_n^3)< 2^{c_s n \log n}.\ \end{equation*}$$

$2^{n^{1+\epsilon_s}}$

We give an easy method for constructing containers for simple hypergraphs. The method also has consequences for non-simple hypergraphs. Some applications are given; in particular, a very transparent calculation is offered for the number of H-free hypergraphs, where H is some fixed uniform hypergraph.

How many strict local maxima can a real quadratic function on {0, 1}n have? Holzman conjectured a maximum of $\binom{n }{ \lfloor n/2 \rfloor}$. The aim of this paper is to prove this conjecture. Our approach is via a generalization of Sperner's theorem that may be of independent interest.

We show that for any coprime integers λ1, . . ., λk and any finite A ⊂ $\mathbb{Z}$, one has

|\lambda_1 \cdot A + \cdots + \lambda_k \cdot A| \geq (|\lambda_1| + \cdots + |\lambda_k|)|A|- C,

In a recent paper, Baxter and Zeilberger showed that the two most important Mahonian statistics, the inversion number and the major index, are asymptotically independently normally distributed on permutations. In another recent paper, Canfield, Janson and Zeilberger proved the result, already known to statisticians, that the Mahonian distribution is asymptotically normal on words. This leaves one question unanswered: What, asymptotically, is the joint distribution of the inversion number and the major index on words? We answer this question by establishing convergence to a bivariate normal distribution.

In my recent paper [1] there is a mistake in the proof of Corollary 3. The first line of the displayed equation in that proof asserts that

\[\int_G|\langle u,\pi^g v\rangle_V|^2\,\rm{d} g = \int_G\langle u\otimes u,(\pi^g\otimes \pi^g)(v\otimes v)\rangle_{V\otimes V}\, \rm{d} g.\]