Fred Roberts - Böcker

Reliability problems arise with increasing frequency as our systems of telecommunications, information transmission, transportation, and distribution become more and more complex. In December 1989 at DIMACS at Rutgers University, a Workshop on Reliability of Computer and Communication Networks was held to examine the discrete mathematical methods relevant to these problems. There were nearly ninety participants, including theoretical mathematicians, computer scientists, and electrical engineers from academia and industry, as well as network practitioners, engineers, and reliability planners from leading companies involved in the use of computer and communications networks. This volume, published jointly with the Association for Computing Machinery, contains the proceedings from this Workshop. The aim of the Workshop was to identify the latest trends and important open problems, as well as to survey potential practical applications.The Workshop explored questions of computation of reliability of existing systems and of creating new designs to insure high reliability, in addition to the closely related notion of survivability. Redundancy, single stage and multistage networks, interconnected networks, and fault tolerance were also covered. The Workshop emphasized practical applications, with many invited speakers from a variety of companies which are dealing with practical network reliability problems. The success of the Workshop in fostering many new interactions among researchers and practitioners is reflected in the proceedings, which provide an exciting look at some of the major advances at the forefront of this important field of research.

Now with solutions to selected problems, Applied Combinatorics, Second Edition presents the tools of combinatorics from an applied point of view. This bestselling textbook offers numerous references to the literature of combinatorics and its applications that enable readers to delve more deeply into the topics.After introducing fundamental counting rules and the tools of graph theory and relations, the authors focus on three basic problems of combinatorics: counting, existence, and optimization problems. They discuss advanced tools for dealing with the counting problem, including generating functions, recurrences, inclusion/exclusion, and Pólya theory. The text then covers combinatorial design, coding theory, and special problems in graph theory. It also illustrates the basic ideas of combinatorial optimization through a study of graphs and networks.

This IMA Volume in Mathematics and its Applications Applications of Combinatorics and Graph Theory to the Biological and Social Sciences is based on the proceedings of a workshop which was an integral part of the 1987-88 IMA program on APPLIED COMBINATORICS. We are grateful to the Scientific Committee: Victor Klee (Chairman), Daniel Kleitman, Dijen Ray-Chaudhuri and Dennis Stanton for planning and implementing an exciting and stimulating year­ long program. We especially thank the Workshop Organizers, Joel Cohen and Fred Roberts, for organizing a workshop which brought together many of the major figures in a variety of research fields connected with the application of combinatorial ideas to the social and biological sciences. A vner Friedman Willard Miller APPLICATIONS OF COMBINATORICS AND GRAPH THEORY TO THE BIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES: SEVEN FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS FRED S. RoBERTS* Abstract. To set the stage for the other papers in this volume, seven fundamental concepts which arise in the applications of combinatorics and graph theory in the biological and social sciences are described. These ideas are: RNA chains as "words" in a 4 letter alphabet; interval graphs; competition graphs or niche overlap graphs; qualitative stability; balanced signed graphs; social welfare functions; and semiorders. For each idea, some basic results are presented, some recent results are given, and some open problems are mentioned.