On the Mean Subtree Order of Graphs Under Edge Addition

TL;DR

This paper investigates how adding edges affects the average size of subtrees in a graph, providing counterexamples to a previous conjecture and proposing a weaker, proven conjecture for trees.

Contribution

It disproves a recent conjecture that edge addition always increases mean subtree order and introduces a weaker conjecture, which is proven for trees.

Findings

Adding an edge can decrease mean subtree order by up to n/3

Counterexamples show the original conjecture is false

The weaker conjecture holds for trees

Abstract

For a graph $G$, the mean subtree order of $G$ is the average order of a subtree of $G$. In this note, we provide counterexamples to a recent conjecture of Chin, Gordon, MacPhee, and Vincent, that for every connected graph $G$ and every pair of distinct vertices $u$ and $v$ of $G$, the addition of the edge between $u$ and $v$ increases the mean subtree order. In fact, we show that the addition of a single edge between a pair of nonadjacent vertices in a graph of order $n$ can decrease the mean subtree order by as much as $n/3$ asymptotically. We propose the weaker conjecture that for every connected graph $G$ which is not complete, there exists a pair of nonadjacent vertices $u$ and $v$, such that the addition of the edge between $u$ and $v$ increases the mean subtree order. We prove this conjecture in the special case that $G$ is a tree.