Sandi Klavzar – författare

This concise monograph present the complete history of the domination game and its variants up to the most recent developments and will stimulate research on closely related topics, establishing a key reference for future developments.  The crux of the discussion surrounds new methods and ideas that were developed within the theory, led by the imagination strategy, the Continuation Principle, and the discharging method of Bujtás, to prove results about domination game invariants. A toolbox of proof techniques is provided for the reader to obtain results on the domination game and its variants.  Powerful proof methods such as the imagination strategy are presented.  The Continuation Principle is developed, which provides a much-used monotonicity property of the game domination number.  In addition, the reader is exposed to the discharging method of Bujtás. The power of this method was shown by improving the known upper bound, in terms of a graph''s order, on the (ordinary) domination number of graphs with minimum degree between 5 and 50. The book is intended primarily for students in graph theory as well as established graph theorists and it can be enjoyed by anyone with a modicum of mathematical maturity.

The authors include exact results for several families of graphs, present what is known about the domination game played on subgraphs and trees, and provide the reader with the computational complexity aspects of domination games.  Versions of the games which involve only the “slow” player yield the Grundy domination numbers, which connect the topic of the book with some concepts from linear algebra such as zero-forcing sets and minimum rank.  More than a dozen other related games on graphs and hypergraphs are presented in the book.  In all these games there are problems waiting to be solved, so the area is rich for further research. 

The domination game belongs to the growing family of competitive optimization graph games.  The game is played by two competitors who take turns adding a vertex to a set of chosen vertices.  They collaboratively produce a special structure in the underlying host graph, namely a dominating set.  The two players have complementary goals: one seeks to minimize the size of the chosen set while the other player tries to make it as large as possible.  The game is not one that is either won or lost.  Instead, if both players employ an optimal strategy that is consistent with their goals, the cardinality of the chosen set is a graphical invariant, called the game domination number of the graph.  To demonstrate that this is indeed a graphical invariant, the game tree of a domination game played on a graph is presented for the first time in the literature. 

This is the first comprehensive monograph on the mathematical theory of the solitaire game “The Tower of Hanoi” which was invented in the 19th century by the French number theorist Édouard Lucas. The book comprises a survey of the historical development from the game’s predecessors up to recent research in mathematics and applications in computer science and psychology. Apart from long-standing myths it contains a thorough, largely self-contained presentation of the essential mathematical facts with complete proofs, including also unpublished material. The main objects of research today are the so-called Hanoi graphs and the related Sierpiński graphs. Acknowledging the great popularity of the topic in computer science, algorithms and their correctness proofs form an essential part of the book. In view of the most important practical applications of the Tower of Hanoi and its variants, namely in physics, network theory, and cognitive (neuro)psychology, other related structures and puzzles like, e.g., the “Tower of London”, are addressed. Numerous captivating integer sequences arise along the way, but also many open questions impose themselves. Central among these is the famed Frame-Stewart conjecture. Despite many attempts to decide it and large-scale numerical experiments supporting its truth, it remains unsettled after more than 70 years and thus demonstrates the timeliness of the topic. Enriched with elaborate illustrations, connections to other puzzles and challenges for the reader in the form of (solved) exercises as well as problems for further exploration, this book is enjoyable reading for students, educators, game enthusiasts and researchers alike.

The solitaire game “The Tower of Hanoi" was invented in the 19th century by the French number theorist Édouard Lucas. The book presents its mathematical theory and offers a survey of the historical development from predecessors up to recent research. In addition to long-standing myths, it provides a detailed overview of the essential mathematical facts with complete proofs, and also includes unpublished material, e.g., on some captivating integer sequences. The main objects of research today are the so-called Hanoi graphs and the related Sierpiński graphs. Acknowledging the great popularity of the topic in computer science, algorithms, together with their correctness proofs, form an essential part of the book. In view of the most important practical applications, namely in physics, network theory and cognitive (neuro)psychology, the book also addresses other structures related to the Tower of Hanoi and its variants.

The updated second edition includes, for the first time in English, the breakthrough reached with the solution of the “The Reve''s Puzzle" in 2014. This is a special case of the famed Frame-Stewart conjecture which is still open after more than 75 years. Enriched with elaborate illustrations, connections to other puzzles and challenges for the reader in the form of (solved) exercises as well as problems for further exploration, this book is enjoyable reading for students, educators, game enthusiasts and researchers alike.

Excerpts from reviews of the first edition:

“The book is an unusual, but very welcome, form of mathematical writing: recreational mathematics taken seriously and serious mathematics treated historically. I don’t hesitate to recommend this book to students, professional research mathematicians, teachers, and to readers of popular mathematics who enjoy more technical expository detail.”

Chris Sangwin, The Mathematical Intelligencer 37(4) (2015) 87f.

“The book demonstrates that the Tower of Hanoi has a very rich mathematical structure, and as soon as we tweak the parameters we surprisingly quickly find ourselves in the realm of open problems.”

László Kozma, ACM SIGACT News 45(3) (2014) 34ff.

“Each time I open the book I discover a renewed interest in the Tower of Hanoi. I am sure that this will be the case for all readers.”

Jean-Paul Allouche, Newsletter of the European Mathematical Society 93 (2014) 56.