(In Week 1, Wednesday and Friday, there will be a guest lecturer,
Dr. Michael Miller of RAND Corp., who will talk about the
Burnside/Polya theory of counting.)
Office hours:
Week 1: Mon 2-3 only. Thereafter: MW 2-3, Thurs 2:30-3:30,
and also by appointment (except holidays). But I'll often be
available informally as well from Week 2 on; feel free to come by.
Texts:
None required. Soon the following will be on reserve
in the Science and Engineering Library; they represent
a mixture of levels:
Liu, Intro. to Combinatorial Mathematics
Straight, Combinatorics, an Invitation
Hall, Combinatorial Theory
Liu, Topics in Combinatorial Mathematics
Homework:
A few problems of mixed difficulties will be assigned,
generally weekly. Feel free to ask me for suggestions on problems
as needed. If you use some source for a solution
from time to time, that's OK, but do give credit. You may
also do occasional problems jointly with someone else.
As in all graduate work, try for the right degree of succinctness,
elegance, and generality. Sometimes you may wish to generalize
the question asked. For easy problems, give briefer answers!
Final exam:
None.
Grading:
Meaningful but reasonable, based on homework.
Prerequisites:
Algebra at the level of 210A plus finite fields will be assumed,
although we may review the latter. With regard to undergraduate
combinatorics you should at least be familiar with binomial
coefficients.
Topics:
Both enumeration and configuration topics, to be selected
based on the background of the class.
Math 206B:
Not offered this year, but 206A will be fairly eclectic.
