On the computation of edit distance functions

Abstract

The edit distance between two graphs on the same labeled vertex set is the size of the symmetric difference of the edge sets. The edit distance function of the hereditary property, H, is a function of p∈[0,1] and is the limit of the maximum normalized distance between a graph of density p and H.This paper uses the symmetrization method of Sidorenko in order to compute the edit distance function of various hereditary properties. For any graph H, Forb(H) denotes the property of not having an induced copy of H. We compute the edit distance function for Forb(H), where H is any split graph, and the graph H9, a graph first used to describe the difficulties in computing the edit distance function.