Existence by Counting

  • Shannon 1949: There is a boolean function $f:{0,1}^n\rightarrow{0,1}$ which cannot be computed by any circuit with $\frac{2^n}{3n}$ gates
    • $f$ computable by $t$ gates: $2^{2^n}$
    • circuits with $t$ gates: $<2^t(2n+t+1)^{2t}$

Double Counting

  • Handshaking Lemma: $\sum_{v\in V}d(v)=2|E|$
  • Sperner’s Lemma(1928): For any properly colored trangulation, there existst a cell receiving all three colors
    • trangulation: a decompostion of $abc$ to small triangles(cells) such that any two different cells are either disjoint or share and edge of vertex
    • proper coloring: color with 3 color that
      • $a,b,c$ has different color
      • The vertices in each of the three lines $ab,bc,ac$ receive two colors
  • Brouwer’s fixed point theorem (1911)
    • $\forall$ continous function $f:B\rightarrow B$ of an $n$-dimensional ball, $\exists$ a fixed point $x=f(x)$

Pigeonhole Principle

  • General Pigeonhole Principle: If a set consisting of more than $mn$ objects is partitioned into $n$ classes, then some class receives more than $n$ objects.
  • Inevitable divisors
  • Monotonic subsequences
  • Dirichlet’s approximation: $x$ is an irrational number, $\forall n\in\mathbb{N},\exists\frac{p}{q},1\leq q\leq n$ and $|x-\frac{p}{q}|<\frac{1}{nq}$