An introduction to combinatorial designs and graph decompositions

  • Quem: Francesca Merola
  • Onde: FGV, Praia de Botafogo, 190, sala 411
  • Quando: 10 de Dezembro de 2012 às 10:00h

Combinatorial design theory is the study of arranging elements of a finite set into patterns (subsets, words, arrays) according to specified rules. Some of its first results date from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the research of Euler, Kirkman, Cayley, Sylvester and others, but it was in the twentieth century that the study of combinatorial designs emerged as an academic subject in its own right. When Fisher and his colleagues developed the mathematics of experimental design in the 1920s, combinatorial design theory was born as a field intimately linked to its applications.

Design theory today is an active area of combinatorics with close ties to several other areas of mathematics including group theory, the theory of finite fields, the theory of finite geometries, number theory, combinatorial matrix theory, and graph theory, and with a wide range of applications in areas such as information theory, statistics and computer science.

The aim of this talk is to give a brief overview of some parts of the theory of combinatorial designs and graph decompositions, touching on some of the problems that are studied in the field, describing algebraic methods and constructions and mentioning some of the many applications of designs and decompositions.

Observação para visitantes

A presença é gratuíta e não exige confirmação. A FGV não permite a entrada de homens vestindo bermuda ou chinelo.

Tags: