P. J. Cameron - Böcker

These are notes deriving from lecture courses given by the authors in 1973 at Westfield College, London. The lectures described the connection between the theory of t-designs on the one hand, and graph theory on the other. A feature of this book is the discussion of then-recent construction of t-designs from codes. Topics from a wide range of finite combinatorics are covered and the book will interest all scholars of combinatorial theory.

This book is concerned with the relations between graphs, error-correcting codes and designs, in particular how techniques of graph theory and coding theory can give information about designs. A major revision and expansion of a previous volume in this series, this account includes many examples and new results as well as improved treatments of older material. So that non-specialists will find the treatment accessible the authors have included short introductions to the three main topics. This book will be welcomed by graduate students and research mathematicians and be valuable for advanced courses in finite combinatorics.

Originally published in 1981, this collection of 33 research papers follows from a conference on the interwoven themes of finite Desarguesian spaces, Steiner systems, coding theory, group theory, block designs, generalized quadrangles, and projective planes. There is a comprehensive introduction, which aims to interest the non-specialist in the subject and which indicates how the contributions fit together. This is a field of research pursued both for its intrinsic interest and its applications. These papers include a number of open problems whose statement requires very little mathematical sophistication.

Although graph theory, design theory, and coding theory had their origins in various areas of applied mathematics, today they are to be found under the umbrella of discrete mathematics. Here the authors have considerably reworked and expanded their earlier successful books on graphs, codes and designs, into an invaluable textbook. They do not seek to consider each of these three topics individually, but rather to stress the many and varied connections between them. The discrete mathematics needed is developed in the text, making this book accessible to any student with a background of undergraduate algebra. Many exercises and useful hints are included througout, and a large number of references are given.