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Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.

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Claim. Every graph with nn vertices and more than n2/4n^2/4 edges has an edge lying in at least n/6n/6 triangles, the statement of Problem 905. The claimed result is B. Bollobás and V. Nikiforov, Books in graphs, European J. Combin. 26 (2005), no. 2, 259--270, DOI 10.1016/j.ejc.2004.01.007 (issue dated February 2005; Crossref record created 17 April 2004; Elsevier open archive); arXiv:math/0405080, first version 5 May 2004 with the comment "accepted in Eur. J. Combin", the claim's date and the version cited. The paper is not held as a filed source. A book of size qq is a set of qq triangles on a common edge, and bk(G)\mathrm{bk}(G), the booksize, is the size of the largest book in GG, so the claim reads bk(G)≥n/6\mathrm{bk}(G)\ge n/6 whenever GG has nn vertices and more than n2/4n^2/4 edges. Section 2 opens with the history: Erdős conjectured in 1962 that a graph of order nn with more than n2/4n^2/4 edges has booksize at least ⌊n/6⌋\lfloor n/6\rfloor, written also as β(n,⌊n2/4⌋+1)≥n/6\beta(n,\lfloor n^2/4\rfloor+1)\ge n/6, and this was proved by Edwards in an unpublished manuscript of 1977 (the paper's reference [3]) and independently by Khadžiivanov and Nikiforov in the 1979 note (its reference [10]). Theorem 1 is a counting inequality: for G=G(n,m)G=G(n,m) with degrees d(1),…,d(n)d(1),\dots,d(n), (6k3(G)−∑id2(i)+nm)bk(G)≥nk3(G)+8k4(G)+2k4(3)(G)\bigl(6k_3(G)-\sum_id^2(i)+nm\bigr)\mathrm{bk}(G)\ge nk_3(G)+8k_4(G)+2k_4^{(3)}(G), where k3k_3 counts triangles, k4k_4 induced copies of K4K_4 and k4(3)k_4^{(3)} induced triangles with an isolated vertex; the paper says its proof uses arguments from the 1979 note. Corollary 2, which the paper attributes to Edwards [3]: for every G(n,m)G(n,m) with m>n2/4m>n^2/4, bk(G)≥2m/n−n/3\mathrm{bk}(G)\ge2m/n-n/3. Its proof sets β=bk(G)\beta=\mathrm{bk}(G), drops the two k4k_4 terms to obtain (6β−n)k3(G)≥β(∑id2(i)−nm)(6\beta-n)k_3(G)\ge\beta\bigl(\sum_id^2(i)-nm\bigr), and since ∑id2(i)≥4m2/n>nm\sum_id^2(i)\ge4m^2/n>nm concludes 6β>n6\beta>n before deriving the bound. Corollary 3: for every G(n,⌊n2/4⌋+1)G(n,\lfloor n^2/4\rfloor+1), bk(G)>n/6\mathrm{bk}(G)>n/6. The intermediate inequality 6 bk(G)>n6\,\mathrm{bk}(G)>n holds for every m>n2/4m>n^2/4, and in any case a graph with more than n2/4n^2/4 edges contains a spanning subgraph with exactly ⌊n2/4⌋+1\lfloor n^2/4\rfloor+1 edges whose books are books of the larger graph; so every graph with more than n2/4n^2/4 edges has an edge on more than n/6n/6 triangles, the statement with a surplus. The paper's second author shares the name of the 1979 note's coauthor, V. Nikiforov.

Depends on. Nothing in this wiki; the argument (Theorem 1 and the bound ∑id2(i)≥4m2/n\sum_id^2(i)\ge4m^2/n from the Cauchy--Schwarz inequality) is self-contained.

Acceptance. Refereed publication in the European Journal of Combinatorics (Crossref record: volume 26, issue 2, pp. 259--270, issue dated February 2005; the arXiv comment of May 2004 says the paper was accepted there), the refereed evidence. No reviewed evidence is listed: the site's commentary credits Edwards and the 1979 note and does not name this paper, and the external Lean file's docstring, which calls this paper's proof cleaner and follows its route, is not an independent review. Because of the shared author, this page is not used as independent acceptance of the 1979 note on its claim page; it does independently attest Edwards's 1977 manuscript, recorded on Edwards's page. Read depth: claims checked for Theorem 1 and Corollaries 2 and 3 in the arXiv text; the proof of Corollary 2 read and followed; the proof of Theorem 1 not read; the journal text not compared with the preprint.

Formalization. None declared a formalization of this paper. The external Lean file linked on the Khadzhiivanov and Nikiforov page declares itself a formalization of the 1979 note's result and, by its docstring, follows this paper's route, proving 3∑vd(v)2≤6et^+2ne3\sum_vd(v)^2\le6e\hat t+2ne (its lemma bollobas_nikiforov) and then n<6t^n<6\hat t; it is a link on that page and gives no formalized evidence on either page.