From Montserrat to Settler-Colonial Australia: the Intersecting Histories of Caribbean Slave-owning Families, Transported British Radicals, and Indigenous Peoples

When the British government abolished slavery in the Caribbean and compensated the slave-owners, some of the beneficiaries and/or their children and grandchildren went to Australia to make a new life and if possible a new fortune. This essay traces the history of one such family, the Shiells of Montserrat, alongside two other contemporaneous histories – that of Yorkshire radical and convict, John Burkinshaw, and his family, into which one of the Shiells married, and that of the several Indigenous communities these families encountered. Through the experiences of these disparate and intersecting family groups, we can gain insight into both the lived experience and the wider imperial context of the expansion of Australian settler colonialism.

An Erdős-Ko-Rado Type Theorem via the Polynomial Method

A family F is an intersecting family if any two members have a nonempty intersection. Erdős, Ko, and Rado showed that | F | ≤ n − 1 k − 1 holds for a k-uniform intersecting family F of subsets of [ n ] . The Erdős-Ko-Rado theorem for non-uniform intersecting families of subsets of [ n ] of size at most k can be easily proved by applying the above result to each uniform subfamily of a given family. It establishes that | F | ≤ n − 1 k − 1 + n − 1 k − 2 + ⋯ + n − 1 0 holds for non-uniform intersecting families of subsets of [ n ] of size at most k. In this paper, we prove that the same upper bound of the Erdős-Ko-Rado Theorem for k-uniform intersecting families of subsets of [ n ] holds also in the non-uniform family of subsets of [ n ] of size at least k and at most n − k with one more additional intersection condition. Our proof is based on the method of linearly independent polynomials.

Maximal commutative subalgebras of a Grassmann algebra

We provide a new approach to the investigation of maximal commutative subalgebras (with respect to inclusion) of Grassmann algebras. We show that finding a maximal commutative subalgebra in Grassmann algebras is equivalent to constructing an intersecting family of subsets of various odd sizes in [Formula: see text] which satisfies certain combinatorial conditions. Then we find new maximal commutative subalgebras in the Grassmann algebra of odd rank [Formula: see text] by constructing such combinatorial systems for odd [Formula: see text]. These constructions provide counterexamples to conjectures made by Domoskos and Zubor.

On the union of intersecting families

A family of sets is said to be intersecting if any two sets in the family have non-empty intersection. In 1973, Erdős raised the problem of determining the maximum possible size of a union of r different intersecting families of k-element subsets of an n-element set, for each triple of integers (n, k, r). We make progress on this problem, proving that for any fixed integer r ⩾ 2 and for any $$k \le ({1 \over 2} - o(1))n$$, if X is an n-element set, and $${\cal F} = {\cal F}_1 \cup {\cal F}_2 \cup \cdots \cup {\cal F}_r $$, where each $$ {\cal F}_i $$ is an intersecting family of k-element subsets of X, then $$|{\cal F}| \le \left( {\matrix{n \cr k \cr } } \right) - \left( {\matrix{{n - r} \cr k \cr } } \right)$$, with equality only if $${\cal F} = \{ S \subset X:|S| = k,\;S \cap R \ne \emptyset \} $$ for some R ⊂ X with |R| = r. This is best possible up to the size of the o(1) term, and improves a 1987 result of Frankl and Füredi, who obtained the same conclusion under the stronger hypothesis $$k < (3 - \sqrt 5 )n/2$$, in the case r = 2. Our proof utilizes an isoperimetric, influence-based method recently developed by Keller and the authors.

Fractional L-intersecting Families

Let $L = \{\frac{a_1}{b_1}, \ldots , \frac{a_s}{b_s}\}$, where for every $i \in [s]$, $\frac{a_i}{b_i} \in [0,1)$ is an irreducible fraction. Let $\mathcal{F} = \{A_1, \ldots , A_m\}$ be a family of subsets of $[n]$. We say $\mathcal{F}$ is a fractional $L$-intersecting family if for every distinct $i,j \in [m]$, there exists an $\frac{a}{b} \in L$ such that $|A_i \cap A_j| \in \{ \frac{a}{b}|A_i|, \frac{a}{b} |A_j|\}$. In this paper, we introduce and study the notion of fractional $L$-intersecting families.

Counting Intersecting and Pairs of Cross-Intersecting Families

A family of subsets of {1,. . .,n} is called intersecting if any two of its sets intersect. A classical result in extremal combinatorics due to Erdős, Ko and Rado determines the maximum size of an intersecting family of k-subsets of {1,. . .,n}. In this paper we study the following problem: How many intersecting families of k-subsets of {1,. . .,n} are there? Improving a result of Balogh, Das, Delcourt, Liu and Sharifzadeh, we determine this quantity asymptotically for n ≥ 2k+2+2$\sqrt{k\log k}$ and k → ∞. Moreover, under the same assumptions we also determine asymptotically the number of non-trivial intersecting families, that is, intersecting families for which the intersection of all sets is empty. We obtain analogous results for pairs of cross-intersecting families.

Erdős–Ko–Rado for Random Hypergraphs: Asymptotics and Stability

We investigate the asymptotic version of the Erdős–Ko–Rado theorem for the random k-uniform hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$k(n, p). For 2⩽k(n) ⩽ n/2, let $N=\binom{n}k$ and $D=\binom{n-k}k$. We show that with probability tending to 1 as n → ∞, the largest intersecting subhypergraph of $\mathcal{H}$ has size $$(1+o(1))p\ffrac kn N$$ for any $$p\gg \ffrac nk\ln^2\biggl(\ffrac nk\biggr)D^{-1}.$$ This lower bound on p is asymptotically best possible for k = Θ(n). For this range of k and p, we are able to show stability as well.A different behaviour occurs when k = o(n). In this case, the lower bound on p is almost optimal. Further, for the small interval D−1 ≪ p ⩽ (n/k)1−ϵD−1, the largest intersecting subhypergraph of $\mathcal{H}$k(n, p) has size Θ(ln(pD)ND−1), provided that $k \gg \sqrt{n \ln n}$.Together with previous work of Balogh, Bohman and Mubayi, these results settle the asymptotic size of the largest intersecting family in $\mathcal{H}$k, for essentially all values of p and k.