Monotone DNF Formula That Has a Minimal or Maximal Number of Satisfying Assignments

We consider the following extremal problem: Given three natural numbers n, m and l, what is the monotone DNF formula that has a minimal or maximal number of satisfying assignments over all monotone DNF formulas on n variables with m terms each of length l? We first show that the solution to the minimization problem can be obtained by the Kruskal-Katona theorem developed in extremal set theory. We also give a simple procedure that outputs an optimal formula for the more general problem that allows the lengths of terms to be mixed. We then show that the solution to the maximization problem can be obtained using the result of Bollobás on the number of complete subgraphs when l = 2 and the pair (n,m) satisfies a certain condition. Moreover, we give the complete solution to the problem for the case l = 2 and m ≤ n, which cannot be solved by direct application of Bollobás’s result. For example, when n = m, an optimal formula is represented by a graph consisting of ⌊n/3⌋ − 1 copies of C3 and one C3+(n mod 3), where Ck denotes a cycle of length k.