An Extremal Problem Resulting in Many Paths

Richard H. Schelp1, Kiyoshi Yoshimoto2
1 Department of Mathematical Sciences, The University of Memphis Memphis, TN 38152-3240
2 Department of Mathematics, College of Science and Technology Nihon University, Tokyo 101-8308, Japan

Abstract

For a bipartite graph the extremal number for the existence of a specific odd (even) length path was determined in J. Graph Theory \(8 (1984), 83-95\). In this article, we conjecture that for a balanced bi-partite graph with partite sets of odd order the extremal number for an even order path guarantees many more paths of differing lengths.The conjecture is proved for a linear portion of the conjectured paths.