Wednesday, 28 August 2013

Prove that “A tree G with n vertices has (n–1) edges”.

We prove this theorem by induction on the number vertices n.
Basic step: If n = 1, then G contains only one vertex and no edge. So the number of edges in
G is n –1 = 1 – 1 = 0.
Induction hypothesis: The statement is true for all trees with less than ‘n’ vertices. Induction step: Now
let us consider a tree with ‘n’ vertices. Let ‘ek ’ be any edge in T whose end vertices are vi and v j. Since
T is a tree, by there is no other path between vI and v j. So by removing ek from T , we get a disconnected
graph. Furthermore, T - ek consists of exactly two components (say T 1 and T 2). Since T is a tree, there
were no circuits in T and so there were no circuits in T 1 and T 2. Therefore T 1 and T 2 are also trees.
It is clear that |V (T 1)| + |V (T 2)| = |V (T )| where V (T ) denotes the set of vertices in T .
Also |V (T 1)| and |V (T 2)| are less than n.
Therefore by the induction hypothesis, we have
| E (T 1)| = |V (T 1)| - 1 and | E (T 2)| = |V (T 2)| - 1.
| E (T 1)| = |V (T 1)| - 1 and | E (T 2)| = |V (T 2)| - 1.

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