Math 3322: Graph Theory (Fall 2024)

Mikhail Lavrov

Archiving note

This is an archived version of a class I taught at Kennesaw State University. For now, you can still find my course webpage on KSU's website, but I expect it to be taken down eventually. I think these are pretty good lecture notes, and they include many practice problems, so I've decided to archive them on my personal webpage. If you spot any mistakes, please let me know.

General information

• Instructor: Mikhail Lavrov
• Location: Mathematics 120
• Lecture times: 3:30pm to 4:45pm on Tuesday and Thursday.
• Office hours: 12:00pm to 2:00pm on Wednesday.
• D2L page: https://kennesaw.view.usg.edu/d2l/home/3287990.

D2L will be used to submit assignments (these will be posted both here and on D2L, for convenience) and to view grades. The syllabus will also be posted there.

During the scheduled office hours, you should feel free to show up with no notice if you have questions of any kind.

If you cannot make the scheduled office hours, begin by emailing me; if your questions are easy to answer by email, I will do that, and if not, we can find another time to meet. (Allow some time for me to check my email.).

Homework and Exams

There will be eight homework assignments, two midterm exams, and one final exam; the dates are marked below.

I will post the homework assignments here and on D2L; they are always due on Friday at 11:59pm, via D2L.

Exams will be given in person during our ordinary 75-minute class period.

Textbooks

There is no official textbook for this course. I will publish lecture notes on this page before each class; all the material covered will be in those lecture notes.

If you would like additional references, I recommend the following:

• Chartrand and Zhang, A First Course in Graph Theory. This textbook is used by many other sections of Math 3322 (so some of you may already have it); it is also an inexpensive paperback.
• West, Introduction to Graph Theory. This is a very comprehensive resource, going into much more detail than we will on many topics. If you are reading it, read it slowly and carefully: a single page often corresponds to 10-15 minutes of class time!

Detailed Schedule

I will use the labels CZ and W to indicate which sections of the textbooks I mentioned above will correspond to which day of class. (We might not always cover everything in those sections, especially in W.)

The schedule below has links to lecture notes for every day of the semester, so that you can read ahead if you like. These will be updated as we go, and I will keep a log of the changes I make.

You may also be interested in an index to these notes, which is a list of key terms from graph theory, together with the lecture in which they are defined.

Note 9/27: Due to the day we missed on account of weather, we'll have one fewer lecture, and I've decided to skip tournaments (originally scheduled for lecture 19) to fit in the rest of the material. To make life easier on my end, I will not change the numbers of lectures 20-28. If you are interested in the missed content, you can still read it here.