A note on the distribution of weights of fixed-rank matrices over the binary field

Let M be a random $m\times n$ rank-r matrix over the binary field ${\mathbb{F}}_2$, and let $\mathrm{wt}(\mathbf{M})$ be its Hamming weight, that is, the number of nonzero entries of M.We prove that, as $m,n\to +\infty$ with r fixed and $m/n$ tending to a constant, we have that$\frac{\mathrm{wt}(\mathbf{M})-\frac{1-2^{-r}}{2}mn}{\sqrt{\frac{2^{-r}(1-2^{-r})}{4}(m+n)mn}}$ converges in distribution to a standard normal random variable.     

Erdős matching conjecture for almost perfect matchings

In 1965 Erd?s asked, what is the largest size of a family of k-element subsets of an n-element set that does not contain a matching of size $s+1$? In this note, we improve upon a recent result of Frankl and resolve this problem for $s>101k^3$ and $(s+1)k?n<(s+1)(k+\frac{1}{100k})$.