Recent developments in all aspects of combinatorial and incidence geometry are covered in this volume, including their links with the foundations of geometry, graph theory and algebraic structures, and the applications to coding theory and computer science.Topics covered include Galois geometries, blocking sets, affine and projective planes, incidence structures and their automorphism groups. Matroids, graph theory and designs are also treated, along with weak algebraic structures such as near-rings, near-fields, quasi-groups, loops, hypergroups etc., and permutation sets and groups.The vitality of combinatorics today lies in its important interactions with computer science. The problems which arise are of a varied nature and suitable techniques to deal with them have to be devised for each situation; one of the special features of combinatorics is the often sporadic nature of solutions, stemming from its links with number theory. The branches of combinatorics are many and various, and all of them are represented in the 56 papers in this volume.

This book represents a comprehensive overview of the present state of progress in three related areas of combinatorics. It comprises selected papers from a conference held at the University of Montreal. Topics covered in the articles include association schemes, extremal problems, combinatorial geometrics and matroids, and designs. All the papers contain new results and many are extensive surveys of particular areas of research. Particularly valuable will be Ivanov's paper on recent Soviet research in these areas. Consequently this volume will be of great attraction to all researchers in combinatorics and to research students requiring a rapid introduction to some of the open problems in the subject.

Combinatorics is a book whose main theme is the study of subsets of a finite set. It gives a thorough grounding in the theories of set systems and hypergraphs, while providing an introduction to matroids, designs, combinatorial probability and Ramsey theory for infinite sets. The gems of the theory are emphasized: beautiful results with elegant proofs. The book developed from a course at Louisiana State University and combines a careful presentation with the informal style of those lectures. It should be an ideal text for senior undergraduates and beginning graduates.

These notes were first used in an introductory course team taught by the authors at Appalachian State University to advanced undergraduates and beginning graduates. The text was written with four pedagogical goals in mind: offer a variety of topics in one course, get to the main themes and tools as efficiently as possible, show the relationships between the different topics, and include recent results to convince students that mathematics is a living discipline.

The combinatorial theory of species, introduced by Joyal in 1980, provides a unified understanding of the use of generating functions for both labelled and unlabelled structures and as a tool for the specification and analysis of these structures. Of particular importance is their capacity to transform recursive definitions of tree-like structures into functional or differential equations, and vice versa. The goal of this book is to present the basic elements of the theory and to give a unified account of its developments and applications. It offers a modern introduction to the use of various generating functions, with applications to graphical enumeration, Polya theory and analysis of data structures in computer science, and to other areas such as special functions, functional equations, asymptotic analysis and differential equations. This book will be a valuable reference to graduate students and researchers in combinatorics, analysis, and theoretical computer science.

This is the only work to provide a histori­cal account of Kant's theory of arith­metic, examining in detail the theories of both his predecessors and his successors. Until his death, Martin was the editor of Kant-Studien from 1954, of the gen­eral Kant index from 1964, of the Leibniz index from 1968, and coeditor of Leib­nizstudien from 1969. This background is used to its fullest as he strives to make clear the historical milieu in which Kant's mathematical contributions de­veloped. He uses Leibniz, Wolff, and oth­ers whose work was accomplished before Kant was born as well as Lambert, Men­delssohn, and others roughly contempo­rary with Kant; and when a point requires it, he refers to Gauss, Grassman, Frege, Russell, and Hilbert. In her translation Wubnig has ap­proached the original author with an abiding respect. She makes the transla­tion flow in English while preserving as far as possible the flavor of the original. She has added many bibliographical and biographical details to ease the following up of Martin's allusions and suggestions.

This book is a gentle introduction to the enumerative part of combinatorics suitable for study at the advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate level. In addition to covering all the standard techniques for counting combinatorial objects, the text contains material from the research literature which has never before appeared in print, such as the use of quotient posets to study the Möbius function and characteristic polynomial of a partially ordered set, or the connection between quasisymmetric functions and pattern avoidance. The book assumes minimal background, and a first course in abstract algebra should suffice. The exposition is very reader friendly: keeping a moderate pace, using lots of examples, emphasizing recurring themes, and frankly expressing the delight the author takes in mathematics in general and combinatorics in particular.