  The triangle-free process begins with an empty graph on n vertices and
iteratively adds edges chosen uniformly at random subject to the constraint
that no triangle is formed. We determine the asymptotic number of edges in the
maximal triangle-free graph at which the triangle-free process terminates. We
also bound the independence number of this graph, which gives an improved lower
bound on the Ramsey numbers R(3,t): we show R(3,t) > (1-o(1)) t^2 / (4 log t),
which is within a 4+o(1) factor of the best known upper bound. Our improvement
on previous analyses of this process exploits the self-correcting nature of key
statistics of the process. Furthermore, we determine which bounded size
subgraphs are likely to appear in the maximal triangle-free graph produced by
the triangle-free process: they are precisely those triangle-free graphs with
density at most 2.
