Math 340: Discrete Structures II Due date: Friday 28th January

Assignment 1: Matchings

1. Stable Marriages. Prove the following statement is true or give an example

showing that it is false.

In every set of stable marriages either there is some boy bi who is

matched to his most preferred partner or there is some girl gj who is
matched to her most preferred partner.

2. Stable Marriages. Run the Boy-Proposal algorithm to find a stable matching

given the preference lists below:
Boy 1: G1  G2  G3  G4
Boy 2: G1  G4  G3  G2
Boy 3: G2  G1  G3  G4
Boy 4: G4  G2  G3  G1

Girl 1: B4  B3  B1  B2
Girl 2: B2  B4  B1  B3
Girl 3: B4  B1  B2  B3
Girl 4: B3  B2  B1  B4

3. Stable Roommates. In the non-bipartite version of the stable matching problem

we wish to pair up an even number of students in a student dormitory. Each
student has a preference list over every other potential roommate. Give an
example to show that a stable matching need not exist.

4. Permutation Matrices. A matrix of size n × n with only 0 − 1 entries is a

permutation matrix if it has exactly one 1 in each row and exactly one 1 in each
column. Now take an n × n matrix M , with 0 − 1 entries, that has exactly k
1s in each row and exactly k 0s in each column. Show that M is the sum of k
permutation matrices.

5. Bipartite Matchings. Let M1 and M2 be matchings in a bipartite graph G =

(X ∪ Y, E). Let X1 ⊆ X be the subset of vertices of X that touch edges in M1
and let Y2 ⊆ Y be the subset of vertices of Y that touch edges in M2 . Prove

1
 that there is some matching M that contains only edges in M1 ∪ M2 , and that
touches every vertex in X1 ∪ Y2 .

6. Maximal Matchings. A maximal matching is a matching M such that there in

no matching M 0 of greater size with M ⊂ M 0 . If M ∗ is a maximum matching
and M is a maximal matching prove that |M ∗ | ≤ 2|M |.