Avoiding monochromatic sub-paths in uniform hypergraph paths and cycles

Abstract

We present a recursive formula for the number of ways to color $j$ vertices blue in an r-uniform hyperpath of size $n$ while avoiding a blue monochromatic sub-hyperpath of length k. We use this result to solve the corresponding problem for $(r-1)$-tight r-uniform paths and loose r-uniform cycles. This generalizes some well known results from reliability engineering and analysis.