Chapter 8

Matching, marriage and

Menger's theorem

They drew all manner of things—

everything that begins with an M—.
Lewis Carroll

The results of this chapter are more combinatorial than those of the preceding chapters,
although we shall see that they are closely related to graph theory. We begin with a dis-
cussion of Hall's 'marriage' theorem in several different contexts, including its appli-
cations to the construction of latin squares and timetabling problems. In Section 28 we
present a theorem of Menger on the number of disjoint paths connecting a given pair of
vertices in a graph or digraph. In Section 29 we give an alternative formulation of
Menger's theorem, known as the max-flow min-cut theorem, which is of fundamental
importance in connection with network flow problems.

25 Hall's 'marriage' theorem

The marriage theorem, proved in 1935 by Philip Hall, answers the following question,
known as the marriage problem: if there is a finite set of girls, each of whom knows
several hoys, under what conditions can all the girls marry the boys in such a way that
each girl marries a hoy she knows? For example, if there are four girls {g\,g2, £3, £4}
and five boys {b\, b2, ^3, ^4, ^5}, and the friendships are as shown in Fig. 25.1, then a
possible solution is for gj to marry /?4, g2 to marry b\, #3 to marry fr3, and g4 to marry &2-

girl boys known by girl

9i b^ b4 b5

9z b,

93 b2 b3 b4

9A b2 b4

Fig. 25,1
 HalVs 'marriage' theorem 113

This problem can be represented graphically by taking G to be the bipartite graph in

which the vertex set is divided into two disjoint sets V\ and V2, corresponding to the
girls and boys, and where each edge joins a girl to a boy she knows. Fig. 25.2 shows
the graph G corresponding to the situation of Fig. 25.1.
A complete matching from V\ to V2 in a bipartite graph G(V\, V2) is a one-one
correspondence between the vertices in V\ and a subset of the vertices in V2, such that
corresponding vertices are joined. The marriage problem can then be expressed in
graph-theoretic terms in the form: if G - G(V\, V2) is a bipartite graph, when does
there exist a complete matching from V\ to V2 in G?
Returning to 'matrimonial terminology', we note that, for the solution of the mar-
riage problem, every k girls must know collectively at least k boys, for all integers k
satisfying 1 < k<m, where m denotes the total number of girls. We refer to this con-
dition as the marriage condition. It is a necessary condition because, if it were not
true for a given set of k girls, then we could not marry the girls in that set, let alone the
others.
Surprisingly, the marriage condition also turns out to be sufficient. This is the con-
tent of Hail's 'marriage' theorem. Because of its importance, we give three proofs; the
first is due to P. Halmos and H.E. Vaughan.

THEOREM 25.1 (Hall, 1935). A necessary and sufficient condition for a solution of
the marriage problem is that each set of k girls collectively knows at least k boys,
for 1 < k < m.
Remark. Although this theorem is couched in the frivolous terms of the marriage prob-
lem, it also applies to more serious problems. For example, it gives a necessary and
sufficient condition for the solution of a job assignment problem in which applicants
must be assigned to jobs for which they are variously qualified. An example of such a
problem is given in Exercise 25.2.
Proof. As noted above, the condition is necessary. To prove that it is sufficient, we
use induction on m, and assume that the theorem is true if the number of girls is less
than m. Note that the theorem is true if m = 1.
Suppose now that there are m girls. There are two cases to consider.
(i) If every k girls (where k < m) collectively know at least k + 1 boys, so that the
condition is always true 'with one boy to spare', then we take any girl and marry
her to any boy she knows. The original condition then remains true for the other
m—\ girls, who can be married by induction, completing the proof in this case.
(ii) If now there is a set of k girls (k < m) who collectively know exactly k boys, then
these k girls can be married by induction to the k boys, leaving m — k girls still to
be married. But any collection of h of these m — k girls, forh<m~k, must know
at least h of the remaining boys, since otherwise these h girls, together with the
above collection of k girls, would collectively know fewer than h + k boys, con-
trary to our assumption. It follows that the original condition applies to the m — k
girls. They can therefore be married by induction in such a way that everyone is
happy and the proof is complete. //
We can also state Hall's theorem in the language of complete matchings in a bipar-
tite graph. Recall that the number of elements in a set S is denoted by LSI.
114 Matching, marriage and Menger's theorem

COROLLARY 25.2. Let G = G(V], V2) be a bipartite graph, and for each subset A
of'V\, let (p(A) be the set of vertices ofVi that are adjacent to at least one vertex of
A. Then a complete matching from V\ to V2 exists if and only if jAj S l<p(A)/\ for
each subset A ofV\.

Proof. The proof of this corollary is a translation into graph terminology of the above
proof. //

Exercises 25
25.1s Suppose that three boys a, b, c know four girls w, x, y, z as in Fig 25.3:

boy girls known by boy

a w y z
b x z
c x y

Fig. 25.3

(i) Draw the bipartite graph corresponding to this table of relationships,

(ii) Find five different solutions of the corresponding marriage problem,
(iii) Check the marriage condition for this problem.
25.2 A building contractor advertises for a bricklayer, a carpenter, a plumber and a tool-
maker, and receives five applicants - one for the job of bricklayer, one for carpenter, one
for bricklayer and plumber, and two for plumber and toolmaker.
(i) Draw the corresponding bipartite graph.
(ii) Check whether the marriage condition holds for this problem.
Can all of the jobs be filled by qualified people?
25.3s Explain why the graph in Fig. 25.4 has no complete matching from V\ to V2- When does
the marriage condition fail?

Fig. 25.4

25.4 (The 'harem problem') Let B be a set of boys, and suppose that each boy in B wishes to
marry more than one of his girl friends. Find a necessary and sufficient condition for the
harem problem to have a solution. (Hint: replace each boy by several identical copies of
himself, and then use Hall's theorem.)
 Transversal theory 115

25.5 Prove that, if G = G(Vh V2) is a bipartite graph in which the degree of each vertex in Vx
is not less than the degree of each vertex in V2, then G has a complete matching.
25.6* (i) Use the marriage condition to show that if each girl has r (> 1) boy friends and
each boy has r girl friends, then the marriage problem has a solution.
(ii) Use the result of part (i) to prove that, if G is a bipartite graph which is regular of
degree r, then G has a complete matching. Deduce that the chromatic index of G
is r. (This is a special case of Theorem 20.4.)
25.7* Suppose that the marriage condition is satisfied, and that each of the m girls knows at
least t boys. Show, by induction on m, that the marriages can be arranged in at least t\
ways ift<m, and in at least tl/(t- m)\ ways if t > m.

26 Transversal theory
This section is devoted to an alternative proof of Hall's theorem, given in the language
of transversal theory. We leave the translation of this proof into matching or marriage
terminology as an exercise.
Recall from our example in the previous section (see Fig. 25.1) that the sets of boys
known by the four girls were {bi, b4, /? 5 }, {b\}, {bj, ^3, ^4} and {b2, b4], and that a
solution of the marriage problem was obtained by finding four distinct bs, one from
each of these sets of boys (see Fig. 26.1).

Fig. 26.1

In general, if £ is a non-empty finite set, and if f = (Sh . . . , Sm) is a family of (not

necessarily distinct) non-empty subsets of E, then a transversal of f is a set of m
distinct elements of E, one chosen from each set Sr
Now suppose that E= {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}, and let

SX = S2= { 1 , 2 } , 5 3 = 5 4 = { 2 , 3 } , 5 5 = { 1 , 4 , 5 , 6 } .
Then it is impossible to find five distinct elements of E, one from each subset Sf, in
other words, the family f= (S\, . . . , S$) has no transversal. However, the subfamily
J'= (Si, S 2 , S3, S5) has a transversal - for example, {1, 2, 3, 4}. We call a transversal of
a subfamily of ^Fa partial transversal of f. In this example, f has several partial
transversals, such as {1, 2, 3, 6}, {2, 3, 6}, { 1 , 5 } , and 0 . Note that any subset of a
partial transversal is a partial transversal.
It is natural to ask under what conditions a given family of subsets of a set has a
transversal. The connection between this problem and the marriage problem is easily
seen by taking E to be the set of boys, and S( to be the set of boys known by girl gh for