Biased partitions and judicious k-partitions of graphs

Let G = (V,E) be a graph with m edges. For reals p ∈ [0, 1] and q = 1- p, let m_p(G) be the minimum of qe(V₁) +pe(V₂) over partitions V = V₁ ∪ V₂, where e(V_i) denotes the number of edges spanned by V_i. We show that if mp(G) = pqm-δ, then there exists a bipartition V₁, V₂ of G such that e(V₁) ≤ p²m - δ + p√m/2 + o(√m) and e(V₂) ≤ q²m - δ + q √m/2 + o(√m) for δ = o(m^2/3). This is sharp for complete graphs up to the error term o(√m). For an integer k ≥ 2, let fk(G) denote the maximum number of edges in a k-partite subgraph of G. We prove that if fk(G) = (1 - 1/k)m + α, then G admits a k-partition such that each vertex class spans at most m/k² - Ω(m/k^7.5) edges for α = Ω(m/k⁶). Both of the above improve the results of Bollobás and Scott.