Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.
Updated
Source. Theorem 5 and its proof, printed pp. 1325–1326 (published PDF).
Statement. Let be a finite matroid with rank , let be a finite indexed family, and let be integers. There is a -transversal of with if and only if, for every ,
and
Proof. First take . If , condition (6) fails on a singleton, and no representative assignment has multiplicity at most zero. If , the only support is and has rank zero; condition (7) at is , so both sides hold exactly when .
Now suppose . Replace every by its labeled copies and put
By the lift in the definitions, -transversals of are exactly projections of full transversals of . By Theorem 6,
Suppose first that a -transversal of rank at least exists, and lift a witnessing representative assignment to a full transversal of . Hall's necessary condition gives
which is (6). The necessary direction of Perfect's criterion applied in gives
Using (8), its left side is , proving (7).
Conversely, suppose (6) and (7) hold. Equation (6) is exactly Hall's condition for the copied family , so that family has a full transversal. Equations (7) and (8), together with Perfect's criterion, give a partial-transversal range of satisfying . Since the copied family has a full transversal, transversal augmentation extends as a set to a full-transversal range . Rank is monotone, so . Its projection is a -transversal , and (8) gives . This proves sufficiency.
The proof is relative to finite Rado through Perfect's corollary. Hall's theorem and all copied-ground-set identities are linked or proved explicitly.