# Combinatorics: David Ellis (Queen Mary) "Some applications of the $p$-biased measure to Erd\H{o}s-Ko-Rado type problems"

Date:
Mon, 21/11/201611:00-13:00
Location:
B220 Rothberg (CS)
Speaker: David Ellis, Queen Mary
Title: Some applications of the $p$-biased measure to Erd\H{o}s-Ko-Rado type problems
Abstract:
If $X$ is a finite set, the $p$-biased measure on the power-set of $X$ is defined as follows: choose a subset $S$ of $X$ at random by including each element of $X$ independently with probability $p$. If $\mathcal{F}$ is a family of subsets of $X$, one can consider the {\em $p$-biased measure} of $\mathcal{F}$, denoted by $\mu_p(\mathcal{F})$, as a function of $p$; if $\mathcal{F}$ is closed under taking supersets, then this function is an increasing function of $p$. Seminal results of Friedgut and Friedgut-Kalai give criteria for this function to have a sharp threshold'. A careful analysis of the behaviour of this function also yields some rather strong results in extremal combinatorics which do not explicitly mention the $p$-biased measure - in particular, in the field of {\em Erd\H{o}s-Ko-Rado type problems}, which concern the sizes of families of objects in which any two (or three…) of the objects agree' or intersect' in some way. We will discuss some of these, including a recent proof of an old conjecture of Frankl that a symmetric three-wise intersecting family of subsets of $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ has size $o(2^n)$, and some stability' results characterizing the structure of `large' $t$-intersecting families of $k$–element subsets of $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$. Based on joint work with (subsets of) Nathan Keller, Noam Lifshitz and Bhargav Narayanan.