Algorithmic Combinatorics

This book uses new mathematical tools to examine broad computability and complexity questions in enumerative combinatorics, with applications to other areas of mathematics, theoretical computer science, and physics. A focus on effective algorithms leads to the development of computer algebra software of use to researchers in these domains.

The book is centered around the research areas of combinatorics, special functions, and computer algebra. What these research fields share is that many of their outstanding results do not only have applications in Mathematics, but also other disciplines, such as computer science, physics, chemistry, etc.

This book is a concise, self-contained, up-to-date introduction to extremal combinatorics for nonspecialists. There is a strong emphasis on theorems with particularly elegant and informative proofs, they may be called gems of the theory. The author presents a wide spectrum of the most powerful combinatorial tools together with impressive applications in computer science: methods of extremal set theory, the linear algebra method, the probabilistic method, and fragments of Ramsey theory.

This collection of tutorial and research papers introduces readers to diverse areas of modern pure and applied algebraic combinatorics and finite geometries with a special emphasis on algorithmic aspects and the use of the theory of Gröbner bases.