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Graduate Course in Combinatorics, Spring 2005

The course begins with an introduction to two basic tools in enumerative combinatorics, namely generating functions and bijective proofs. These will be presented in the context of some classical combinatorics and via applications to elementary examples. We will then study permutations, polytopes and partially ordered sets and connections between these structures. Simplicial complexes will likely also crop up in one way or another.

I will be giving two two-hour lectures per week at 13.15-15 in room S2, , most Mondays and Fridays in February, except for Feb. 18 and 21. This is about half the number of lectures I have usually given for this course, so this year's version will require more independent work by the students than usual.

Literature

R.P. Stanley: Enumerative Combinatorics, Volume 1, Cambridge UP, Cambridge 2000, ISBN 0521663512.
Can be ordered from Cambridge UP.

The following two books are also warmly recommended:

H.S. Wilf: generatingfunctionology, Academic Press 1993, ISBN: 0127519564. This book can be downloaded in its entirety here. An excellent introduction to generating functions.

M. Bóna: A walk through combinatorics, World Scientific 2002,ISBN 981-02-4900-4. A very nice book covering many of the subjects in the course. (Beware of typos, though!)

Teacher

Einar Steingrímsson <einar@math.chalmers.se>, tel.: 5324, room 1208, homepage

Last modified: Mon Sep 23 22:22:07 MET DST 2002