[Math] Graph theory problem with friends

contest-mathgraph theory

There are 9 people and for every 3 people, 2 of them are mutual friends. Please show that there exist 4 people out of the 9 who are all mutual friends.

Best Answer

Recall the handshake lemma: the number of odd vertices must be even. If $|G| = 9$, then take an even vertex $v$ (one must exist since otherwise there are $9$ odd vertices). $d(v)$ must be one of $0,2,4,6,8$.

If $d(v) \ge 6$, then take all the neighbors of $v$. Since $R(3,3) = 6$, then there must be an independent set of $3$ vertices (in which case we are done) or $3$ vertices which are mutually adjacent, so form a clique of order $4$ with $v$.

If $d(v) \le 4$, then take all $4$ non-neighbors of $v$. Either these form a clique of order $4$ or there are two non-adjacent vertices, which together with $v$ form an independent set of order $3$.

This proves that $R(3,4) \le 9$.