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Looking for a primer on Graph Theory


lewelma
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My OLD copy of Rosen's discrete math book has a ~90page chapter on graph theory. MIT's Math for CS/Discrete math OCW course uses this book so it probably has some good resources as well. I think Kathy has recommended the OCW course for discrete math in general and it should be accessible to an advanced student. That and the Olympiad practice books should get you up to speed.

 

Good luck,

-chris

 

Edit: After looking closer chapter 7 above is explicitly Graphs but chapter 6 on Relations may also be useful. Chapter 8 covers Trees and is probably more applied than what you need. In general this book will be more applied than the Harris book below.

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My OLD copy of Rosen's discrete math book has a ~90page chapter on graph theory. MIT's Math for CS/Discrete math OCW course uses this book so it probably has some good resources as well. I think Kathy has recommended the OCW course for discrete math in general and it should be accessible to an advanced student. That and the Olympiad practice books should get you up to speed.

 

Good luck,

-chris

 

Edit: After looking closer chapter 7 above is explicitly Graphs but chapter 6 on Relations may also be useful. Chapter 8 covers Trees and is probably more applied than what you need. In general this book will be more applied than the Harris book below.

 

Thanks for the reminder,raptordad. :001_smile: Yep, MIT OCW for EECS 6.042 has material on graph theory (Weeks 6 & 7), & it looks like it would be accessible for your ds. There are a few other OCW versions of this course if you want alternative or extra reading.

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Thanks everyone. The OCW course has some nice readings that I think we can get through. And I just checked my library and it has 5 books on discrete mathematics! all bought between 1989 and 1990, so clearly some buyer had an interest!

 

Raptor-dad, which Olympiad practice books are you referring to?

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Math contest problems

http://www.mathsolym...01/graphs01.pdf

http://yufeizhao.com.../tang-graph.pdf

http://math.stanford...GraphTheory.pdf

 

What I found for my younger last year, more of network analysis

http://members.ozema...works/Ch 08.pdf

http://members.ozema...works/Ch 07.pdf

ETA

Discrete Mathematics Demystified pdf Chapter 8

CPS102 Discrete Math for Computer Science pdf Page 54 onwards

http://cemc.uwaterlo...sentations.html Winter 2013 math circle problems and solutions

Graph Theory with applications by J A Bondy and U S R Murty http://www.iro.umont...FT3545/GTWA.pdf

Graph Theory by Reinhard Diestel (2010 preview is free) http://diestel-graph....com/index.html

Digraphs Theory, Algorithms and Applications by Jorgen Bang-Jensen and Gregory Gutin http://www.cs.rhul.ac.uk/books/dbook/main.pdf

Edited by Arcadia
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Raptor-dad, which Olympiad practice books are you referring to?

 

 

I wasn't referring to specific books... I just figured the Olympiad focused books would have graph theory type problems and the discrete math or graph theory books could give you the background to make sense of the problems.

 

Good luck,

-chris

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Arcadia, you should be my own personal reference librarian. Oh wait, I think you already are! This stuff is great. I have printed what I could. But since my computer blew up last week, I am working on a 12 year old lap top, and it is having trouble opening the books! So will have to look at them later.

 

 

These links failed. Do you mind relinking?

 

http://cemc.uwaterlo...sentations.html Winter 2013 math circle problems and solutions

 

Wow!!! Why don't we have math circles here? I can mine this site for years!

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Kathy, are there any lectures available or only lecture notes? If there are lectures, I can't find them.

 

Thanks!

 

The 6.042 course version that I linked has lecture slides only. There's another recent version of this course which does have video lectures (different professor). I didn't link it originally because this prof uses an example in his first graph theory lecture which isn't completely G-rated. You might want to preview it first to see if it's OK; I didn't have time to go through the lecture completely myself.

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The current materials for MIT 6.042 course are at

http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.042/spring13/class-material.shtml

 

In that page you can find an 800 page book and lots of homework and class problems.

I have been following the book for the last 2years as it gets used and improved (The link

changes every semester). It has several chapters about graph theory and also lots

of other material that can be used for Math Olympiad training like counting and probability etc.

 

I think the book is really great. I am using it for myself since I need to work with graphs

at my current job but never took a graph theory course at school.

 

But in my opinion the book would be most useful for a person that knows or is trying

to learn how to program because interspersed within

the book are several topics that have to do with programming that are of no interest to

a person that wants to learn how to solve Olympiad problems (i.e. there are topics about how to

represent graphs in a computer program, several computer algorithms etc.)

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I don't see it listed here (maybe it is) but my son has this one: Introduction to Graph Theory by Richard Trudeau. It's one of those little Dover paperbacks.

 

A little blurb on the back from Mathematics Teacher:

 

Intended for the reader with no more than high school algebra . . . this non-technical introduction to graph theory is a must for every library.

 

Trudeau says it's for the "mathematically traumatized."

 

:D

 

ETA: My teenager just came home so I asked him his opinion about the graph theory books that he has.

 

Trudeau's book = Meh. Not very hard but might be a good intro.

A Beginner's Guide to Graph Theory by W.D. Wallis = Also an intro, but he likes this one better.

Graph Theory with Applications by Bondy and Murty = Too hard for a beginner but maybe someone who's advanced could do some of the problems.

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