In this note, we study large deviations of the number $mathbf{N}$ of intercalates ($2times2$ combinatorial subsquares which are themselves Latin squares) in a random $ntimes n$ Latin square. In particular, for constant $delta>0$ we prove that $Pr(mat
hbf{N}le(1-delta)n^{2}/4)leexp(-Omega(n^{2}))$ and $Pr(mathbf{N}ge(1+delta)n^{2}/4)leexp(-Omega(n^{4/3}(log n)^{2/3}))$, both of which are sharp up to logarithmic factors in their exponents. As a consequence, we deduce that a typical order-$n$ Latin square has $(1+o(1))n^{2}/4$ intercalates, matching a lower bound due to Kwan and Sudakov and resolving an old conjecture of McKay and Wanless.
Very sparse random graphs are known to typically be singular (i.e., have singular adjacency matrix), due to the presence of low-degree dependencies such as isolated vertices and pairs of degree-1 vertices with the same neighbourhood. We prove that th
ese kinds of dependencies are in some sense the only causes of singularity: for constants $kge 3$ and $lambda > 0$, an ErdH os--Renyi random graph $Gsimmathbb{G}(n,lambda/n)$ with $n$ vertices and edge probability $lambda/n$ typically has the property that its $k$-core (its largest subgraph with minimum degree at least $k$) is nonsingular. This resolves a conjecture of Vu from the 2014 International Congress of Mathematicians, and adds to a short list of known nonsingularity theorems for extremely sparse random matrices with density $O(1/n)$. A key aspect of our proof is a technique to extract high-degree vertices and use them to boost the rank, starting from approximate rank bounds obtainable from (non-quantitative) spectral convergence machinery due to Bordenave, Lelarge and Salez.
The classical ErdH{o}s-Littlewood-Offord theorem says that for nonzero vectors $a_1,dots,a_nin mathbb{R}^d$, any $xin mathbb{R}^d$, and uniformly random $(xi_1,dots,xi_n)in{-1,1}^n$, we have $Pr(a_1xi_1+dots+a_nxi_n=x)=O(n^{-1/2})$. In this paper we
show that $Pr(a_1xi_1+dots+a_nxi_nin S)le n^{-1/2+o(1)}$ whenever $S$ is definable with respect to an o-minimal structure (for example, this holds when $S$ is any algebraic hypersurface), under the necessary condition that it does not contain a line segment. We also obtain an inverse theorem in this setting.
Resolving a conjecture of Furedi from 1988, we prove that with high probability, the random graph $G(n,1/2)$ admits a friendly bisection of its vertex set, i.e., a partition of its vertex set into two parts whose sizes differ by at most one in which
$n-o(n)$ vertices have at least as many neighbours in their own part as across. The engine of our proof is a new method to study stochastic processes driven by degree information in random graphs; this involves combining enumeration techniques with an abstract second moment argument.
