Combinatorial Theory (Math 206B, Winter 2022)

Instructor: Igor Pak
(see email instructions on the bottom of the page).

Canvas Website: is here.

Class schedule: MWF 3:00 - 3:50 pm, MS 6118 (or on Zoom according to UCLA policies)
Zoom meeting link and password will be sent by email from the course my.ucla site.

Office Hours: M 4-4:50, MS 6125 (or on Zoom, same address)

Grading: The grade will be based on attendance, class participation (20%), and homeworks (80%) which will be posted below.

Difficulty: This is a graduate class in Combinatorics. Students are assumed to be fully familiar with undergraduate Combinatorics and Graph Theory (see Math 180 and Math 184 here). On top of that, I will assume fluency with undergraduate Probability and Linear Algebra.

Content

Much of the course will be dedicated to the study of Enumerative and Asymptotic Combinatorics, as well as some applications.

Reading

Textbooks:

Richard Stanley, Enumerative Combinatorics. Download vol. 1 here.
Philippe Flajolet and Robert Sedgewick (FS), Analytic Combinatorics. Download the book here.
Andrew Odlyzko, Asymptotic enumeration methods (AEM), in Handbook of Combinatorics, vol. 2, Elsevier, 1995, pp. 1063-1229. Download the survey here.

Articles:

H. Wilf, What is an answer?, Monthly article.
I. Pak, Complexity problems in enumerative combinatorics, ICM survey.

Home assignments

These will be posted here. The solutions will need to be uploaded to via Gradescope.

HA1 is available here (due Feb 16).

Collaboration policy:
For the home assignments, you can form discussion groups of up to 3 people each. In fact, I would like to encourage you to do that. You can discuss problems but have to write your own separate solutions. You should write the list of people in you group on top of each HA.

Click here to return to Igor Pak Home Page.

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Last updated 1/3/2022.