Customer Reviews

Random Graphs (Cambridge Studies in Advanced Mathematics)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

And has a lot of material, but the organization leaves much to be desired, and standard results in the field are there but very difficult to find (for example, good luck finding the proof of the classical Erdos-Renyi theorem on connectivity threshold for random graphs. The canonical proof is about half a page, while the proof you can back out of Bollobas is maybe two chapters. The configuration model (which is actually due to the author) is actually very simple and explained well in papers by N. Wormald. It is a little painful to read about in this book. Perhaps the most widely used property of random graphs is that they have the expander property (another result of Erdos). This is also carefully hidden.

It is also a little painful for me to give a less than glowing review of this, since I really like Modern Graph Theory, and random graphs are pervasive in modern mathematics, so we really need a good book. This one is not bad, but...

This is the second book by Dr. Bollobas that I have read, and it is clear, that Dr. Bollobas is a master in the field.

It is amazing, how few lines he needs to motivate the subject matter completely.

The gaps in the proofs were sometimes large for me, but then again, the audience he wishes to address are "research students and professional mathematicians", and I am only a hobby mathematician.

The only minus point are the large number of misprints: I counted over 130 of them, and this is not counting misprints like 'some' instead of 'same', etc. This is very annoying if one uses the book for self study.

(Unfortunaltely misprints seem Dr. Bollobas' problem: Also the other book I read: 'Modern Graph Theory' had more than its share)