Comprehensive 2002 introduction to combinatorics on words for mathematicians and theoretical computer scientists.

Publisher Description

Combinatorics on words, or finite sequences, is a field which grew simultaneously within disparate branches of mathematics such as group theory and probability. It has grown into an independent theory finding substantial applications in computer science automata theory and liguistics. This volume is the first to present a thorough treatment of this theory. All of the main results and techniques are covered. The presentation is accessible to undergraduate and graduate level students in mathematics and computer science as well as to specialists in all branches of applied mathematics.

This series is devoted to the publication of high-level monographs which cover the whole spectrum of current discrete mathematics and its applications in various fields. One of its main objectives is to make available to the professional community expositions of results and foundations of methods that play an important role in both the theory and applications of discrete mathematics. Contributions which are on the borderline of discrete mathematics and related fields and which stimulate further research at the crossroads of these areas are particularly welcome.

Written by one of the foremost experts in the field, Algebraic Combinatorics is a unique undergraduate textbook that will prepare the next generation of pure and applied mathematicians. The combination of the author’s extensive knowledge of combinatorics and classical and practical tools from algebra will inspire motivated students to delve deeply into the fascinating interplay between algebra and combinatorics. Readers will be able to apply their newfound knowledge to mathematical, engineering, and business models. The text is primarily intended for use in a one-semester advanced undergraduate course in algebraic combinatorics, enumerative combinatorics, or graph theory. Prerequisites include a basic knowledge of linear algebra over a field, existence of finite fields, and group theory. The topics in each chapter build on one another and include extensive problem sets as well as hints to selected exercises. Key topics include walks on graphs, cubes and the Radon transform, the Matrix–Tree Theorem, and the Sperner property. There are also three appendices on purely enumerative aspects of combinatorics related to the chapter material: the RSK algorithm, plane partitions, and the enumeration of labeled trees. Richard Stanley is currently professor of Applied Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Stanley has received several awards including the George Polya Prize in applied combinatorics, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Leroy P. Steele Prize for mathematical exposition. Also by the author: Combinatorics and Commutative Algebra, Second Edition, © Birkhauser.

There has been considerable interest recently in the subject of patterns in permutations and words, a new branch of combinatorics with its roots in the works of Rotem, Rogers, and Knuth in the 1970s. Consideration of the patterns in question has been extremely interesting from the combinatorial point of view, and it has proved to be a useful language in a variety of seemingly unrelated problems, including the theory of Kazhdan—Lusztig polynomials, singularities of Schubert varieties, interval orders, Chebyshev polynomials, models in statistical mechanics, and various sorting algorithms, including sorting stacks and sortable permutations. The author collects the main results in the field in this up-to-date, comprehensive reference volume. He highlights significant achievements in the area, and points to research directions and open problems. The book will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in theoretical computer science and mathematics, in particular those working in algebraic combinatorics and combinatorics on words. It will also be of interest to specialists in other branches of mathematics, theoretical physics, and computational biology. The author collects the main results in the field in this up-to-date, comprehensive reference volume. He highlights significant achievements in the area, and points to research directions and open problems. The book will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in theoretical computer science and mathematics, in particular those working in algebraic combinatorics and combinatorics on words. It will also be of interest to specialists in other branches of mathematics, theoretical physics, and computational biology.

Algebraic combinatorics is the study of combinatorial objects as an extension of the study of finite permutation groups, or, in other words, group theory without groups. In the spirit of Delsarte's theory, this book studies combinatorial objects such as graphs, codes, designs, etc. in the general framework of association schemes, providing a comprehensive overview of the theory as well as pointing out to extensions.