# Errata to “An Introduction to Ramsey Theory”¶

## Page 24, Proof of Theorem 1.24¶

Not strictly an error, but to conclude that $$\binom{2k-2}{k-1}$$ is a better bound than $$2^{2k}$$, one can simply observe that $$\binom{2k-2}{k-1}$$ is a coefficient in the binomial expansion of

$(1+1)^{2k-2} = 2^{2k-2}$

and hence must be quite smaller than $$2^{2k}$$. No need to use Stirling’s formula here.

[Thanks to Paul Epstein for this observation.]

## Pages 31-34, Proof of Turán’s Theorem¶

The proof given here only works in the case where $$k-1$$ divides $$N$$, in which case we end up with a (perfectly balanced) $$(k-1)$$-partite graph. For the general case, the construction will yield a graph $$K_{n_1, \dots, n_{k-1}}$$ with $$n_{k-1} = |T|$$. It remains to show that any such graph also obeys the Turán bound

$\left ( 1- \dfrac{1}{k-1} \right) \frac{N}{2}.$

By the “swapping” argument on page 32, it is enough to verify this for Turán graphs (i.e. where $$|n_i - n_j| \leq 1$$), and we leave this as an exercise.

[Thanks to Paul Epstein for pointing this out.]

## Page 44, A different proof of Ramsey’s Theorem¶

The inductive argument as laid out in the text, is not quite clear. Below is a better version. Thanks to Paul Epstein and Isaac Goldbring for pointing this out (independently).

Call an $$r$$-coloring $$c:[X]^p \to \{0,\dots, r-1\}$$ good if for any $$x,y \in [X]^p$$, if $$\min x = \min y$$, then $$c(x) = c(y)$$, that is, if two $$p$$-sets have the same beginning, then they have the same color.

Claim I: Let $$p, r$$ be positive integers. The following statement are equivalent.

1. For all $$k \geq 1$$, $$R(p,k,r)$$ exists.

2. For all $$k\geq 1$$, there exists an integer $$N$$ such that if $$|X| \geq N$$ and $$c:[X]^p \to \{0,\dots, r-1\}$$ is an $$r$$-coloring of the $$p$$-element subsets of $$X$$, then there exists a subset $$Y$$ of $$X$$ of size $$k$$ such that $$c$$ is good on $$[Y]^p$$.

We use the following notation for a number $$N$$ as in (2):

$N \; \overset{\text{good}}{\longrightarrow} (k)^p_r.$

The direction (1) $$\Rightarrow$$ (2) is clear, since every monochromatic coloring is a good coloring.

To prove (2) $$\Rightarrow$$ (1), given $$k \geq 1$$, choose $$N$$ large enough so that

$N \; \overset{\text{good}}{\longrightarrow} (r(k-1)+1)^p_r.$

This is possible since we assume that (2) holds for all $$k$$. We claim that for this $$N$$,

$N \; \longrightarrow (k)^p_r.$

So, let $$c$$ be an $$r$$-coloring of $$[N]^p$$. By choice of $$N$$, there exists a set $$Y \subseteq [N]$$ of size $$r(k-1)+1$$ such that $$c$$ is good on $$[Y]^p$$. Now define a new coloring $$c^*: Y \to \{0,\dots, r-1\}$$ be letting

$\begin{equation*} c^*(y) = \text{the color of any p-set in [Y]^p in which y is the least element} \end{equation*}$

for any $$y \leq r(k-1)-p+2$$ (and $$c^*(y) = 0$$ otherwise, when $$y$$ cannot be the least element in a $$p$$-set). This coloring is well-defined due to the goodness of $$c$$ on $$[Y]^p$$.

By the pigeonhole principle, since $$Y$$ is of size $$r(k-1)+1$$, there must exist a subset $$Z \subseteq Y$$ of size $$k$$ on which $$c^*$$ is monochromatic. This in turn implies, using the fact that $$c$$ is good on $$[Z]^p$$, that $$c$$ is monochromatic on $$[Z]^p$$.

Claim 2: For every $$k,p,r \geq 1$$, there exists an $$N$$ such that

$\begin{equation*} N \; \overset{\text{good}}{\longrightarrow} (k)^p_r. \end{equation*}$

Claim 2 is proved by double induction on $$k$$ and $$p$$ ($$r$$ remains arbitrary but fixed throughout). We already know the claim holds for $$k = p = 1$$.

Let us assume Claim 2 holds for $$p-1$$ and for all $$j$$. Moreover, we assume that Claim 2 holds for $$p$$ and for all $$j \leq k$$. So let us choose $$N$$ such that

$\begin{equation*} N \; \overset{\text{good}}{\longrightarrow} (k)^p_r. \end{equation*}$

Because we already verified Claim 1 we can use the fact that $$R(p-1,j,r)$$ exists for all $$j$$. In particular, we can choose $$M$$ such that

$\begin{equation*} M \longrightarrow (N)^{p-1}_r. \end{equation*}$

We claim that

$\begin{equation*} M+1\overset{\text{good}}{\longrightarrow} (k+1)^p_r. \end{equation*}$

Let $$c$$ be an $$r$$-coloring of $$[M+1]^p$$. We define an $$r$$-coloring $$c^{-}$$ on $$[\{2,\dots, M+1\}]^{p-1}$$ by letting

$\begin{equation*} c^-(x_1, \dots, x_{p-1}) = c(1, x_1,\dots, x_{p-1}). \end{equation*}$

By choice of $$M$$, there exists a subset $$Y \subseteq \{2, \dots, M+1\}$$ of size $$N$$ such that $$c^-$$ is monochromatic on $$[Y]^{p-1}$$, which in turn means that $$c$$ is good for any $$p$$-set of $$\{1\} \cup Y$$ starting with $$1$$.

By choice of $$N$$, there exists a subset $$Z \subseteq Y$$ of size $$k$$ such that $$c$$ is good on $$[Z]^{p}$$. It follows that $$c$$ is good on $$[\{1\} \cup Z]^{p}$$, as desired.

Claim 1 and 2 together prove the general Ramsey theorem.

## Page 54, proof of Theorem 2.12¶

The proof as written does not work, as it is not guaranteed that the $$n_i$$ will go to infinity. Thanks to Shamil Asgarli for pointing this out, and for suggesting the following proof.

We simultaneously define, inductively, an infinite path $$\vec{t} \in [T]$$ and a subsequence $$(\vec{s}_{n_k})$$ such that $$\vec{s}_{n_k} \to \vec{t}$$ for $$k \to \infty$$.

We put $$t^0 = r$$ and $$\vec{s}_{n_0} = \vec{s}_0$$. Note that the set

$S_0 = \{ m \colon s_m^0 = t^0 \}$

is infinite (every sequence passes through the root node).

Now assume we have defined $$t^0 < \ldots < t^k$$, where each $$t^i$$ is in $$T$$ and an immediate predecessor of $$t^{i+1}$$, and $$\vec{s}_{n_0}, \ldots, \vec{s}_{n_k}$$ such that the set

$\begin{equation*} S_k = \{ m \colon s_m^0 = t^0, \ldots, s_m^k = t^k \} \end{equation*}$

is infinite. Note that all sequences in $$S_k$$ have distance at most $$2^{-k}$$ from each other in the path metric, since they all have the same first $$k$$ elements. $$S_k$$ is infinite and $$T$$ is finitely branching, hence by the pigeonhole principle we can find an immediate successor $$t^{k+1} \in T$$ of $$t^k$$ such that

$\begin{equation*} S_{k+1} = \{ m \colon s_m^0 = t^0, \ldots, s_m^k = t^k, s_m^{k+1} = t^{k+1} \} \end{equation*}$

is infinite. Let $$n_{k+1}$$ be the smallest number $$m \in S_{k+1}$$ that is greater than $$n_k$$.

Since all $$t^k$$ are on $$T$$, they define an infinite path

$\begin{equation*} \vec{t} = t^0 \, t^1\, t^2 \, \ldots \in [T]. \end{equation*}$

By definition of $$t^k$$, $$d(\vec{t}, \vec{s}_{n_k}) \leq 2^{-k}$$, and thus $$(\vec{s}_{n_k})$$ converges to $$\vec{t}$$ in the path metric.

## Page 75, line 20¶

The sentence starting with “Pick the $$\prec$$-least element $$\ldots$$’’ should read:

“Pick the $$\prec$$-least element $$x_{\alpha_1}$$ of $$Z_1$$ (which must exist since $$\prec$$ is a well-ordering) and observe that $$\{y \in Z_1: c(x_\{\alpha_1\},y) = \text{red} \}$$ is again uncountable.”

Thanks to Shamil Asgarli for catching this.

## Page 158, big formula (formal statement of Ramsey’s theorem)¶

The last line of the formula is incorrect – we need to check each entry in the argument of the function whether it is an element of the set coded by $$z$$. The line should read as follows:

$\forall m \leq l \: ( \, \forall s \leq p \exists i \leq k (\operatorname{decode}(\operatorname{arg}(f,m),s)=\operatorname{decode}(z,i)) \; \Rightarrow \; \operatorname{val}(f,m)=j \,)$

[Thanks to Vineet Gupta and Adnan Aziz for pointing this out.]

## Page 180, proof of Proposition 4.46:¶

The transition from the formula

$\begin{equation*} \mathcal{N} \models \exists x_1 \forall x_2 \ldots \exists x_n \: \psi(a, \vec{c}, \vec{x}) \end{equation*}$

to the $$\Delta_0$$ formula using “meta”-quantifiers needs further justification. In particular, it does not follow inductively by simply applying logical equivalences. Instead, the property of indiscernibles has to be invoked at this step already.

Click here for an improved writeup of the argument (covering the remainder of the proof of Proposition 4.46)

Thanks to Michael Weiss for bringing up this important issue. Michael has a blog diagonalargument.com I recommend. Among other entries, there is a series of “conversations” with John Baez about non-standard models of PA. Here is the first entry. Check it out!

Finally, for the connoisseurs, Michael has provided a proof of the above transition that does not use indiscernibility: PDF file

## Page 182, Definition 4.48¶

Let $$X \subseteq \mathbb{N}$$, $$n \geq 1$$, and suppose $$f: [X]^n \to \mathbb{N}$$. A set $$M \subseteq X$$ with $$|M| > n$$ is min-homogeneous if for every $$s, t \in [M]^n$$,
$\begin{equation*} \min s = \min t \; \Rightarrow \; f(s) = f(t). \end{equation*}$
At several places $$[W]^{n+1}$$ should be $$[Y]^{n+1}$$ instead: page 186, lines 3, 6, last line of the second last paragraph, and page 187, line 2.