This monograph introduces a novel and effective approach to counting lattice paths by using the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) as a type of periodic generating function. Utilizing a previously unexplored connection between combinatorics and Fourier analysis, this method will allow readers to move to higher-dimensional lattice path problems with ease. The technique is carefully developed in the first three chapters using the algebraic properties of the DFT, moving from one-dimensional problems to higher dimensions. In the following chapter, the discussion turns to geometric properties of the DFT in order to study the corridor state space. Each chapter poses open-ended questions and exercises to prompt further practice and future research. Two appendices are also provided, which cover complex variables and non-rectangular lattices, thus ensuring the text will be self-contained and serve as a valued reference. Counting Lattice Paths Using Fourier Methods is ideal for upper-undergraduates and graduate students studying combinatorics or other areas of mathematics, as well as computer science or physics. Instructors will also find this a valuable resource for use in their seminars. Readers should have a firm understanding of calculus, including integration, sequences, and series, as well as a familiarity with proofs and elementary linear algebra.

Adapted from a modular undergraduate course on computational mathematics, Concise Computer Mathematics delivers an easily accessible, self-contained introduction to the basic notions of mathematics necessary for a computer science degree. The text reflects the need to quickly introduce students from a variety of educational backgrounds to a number of essential mathematical concepts. The material is divided into four units: discrete mathematics (sets, relations, functions), logic (Boolean types, truth tables, proofs), linear algebra (vectors, matrices and graphics), and special topics (graph theory, number theory, basic elements of calculus). The chapters contain a brief theoretical presentation of the topic, followed by a selection of problems (which are direct applications of the theory) and additional supplementary problems (which may require a bit more work). Each chapter ends with answers or worked solutions for all of the problems.

This book reports on advanced concepts in fuzzy graph theory, showing a set of tools that can be successfully applied to understanding and modeling illegal human trafficking. Building on the previous book on fuzzy graph by the same authors, which set the fundamentals for readers to understand this developing field of research, this second book gives a special emphasis to applications of the theory. For this, authors introduce new concepts, such as intuitionistic fuzzy graphs, the concept of independence and domination in fuzzy graphs, as well as directed fuzzy networks, incidence graphs and many more.

A key element of any modern video codec is the efficient exploitation of temporal redundancy via motion-compensated prediction. In this book, a novel paradigm of representing and employing motion information in a video compression system is described that has several advantages over existing approaches. Traditionally, motion is estimated, modelled, and coded as a vector field at the target frame it predicts. While this "prediction-centric" approach is convenient, the fact that the motion is "attached" to a specific target frame implies that it cannot easily be re-purposed to predict or synthesize other frames, which severely hampers temporal scalability. In light of this, the present book explores the possibility of anchoring motion at reference frames instead. Key to the success of the proposed "reference-based" anchoring schemes is high quality motion inference, which is enabled by the use of a more "physical" motion representation than the traditionally employed "block" motion fields. The resulting compression system can support computationally efficient, high-quality temporal motion inference, which requires half as many coded motion fields as conventional codecs. Furthermore, "features" beyond compressibility - including high scalability, accessibility, and "intrinsic" framerate upsampling - can be seamlessly supported. These features are becoming ever more relevant as the way video is consumed continues shifting from the traditional broadcast scenario to interactive browsing of video content over heterogeneous networks. This book is of interest to researchers and professionals working in multimedia signal processing, in particular those who are interested in next-generation video compression. Two comprehensive background chapters on scalable video compression and temporal frame interpolation make the book accessible for students and newcomers to the field.

This book brings together the latest research in this new and exciting area of visualization, looking at classifying and modelling cognitive biases, together with user studies which reveal their undesirable impact on human judgement, and demonstrating how visual analytic techniques can provide effective support for mitigating key biases. A comprehensive coverage of this very relevant topic is provided though this collection of extended papers from the successful DECISIVe workshop at IEEE VIS, together with an introduction to cognitive biases and an invited chapter from a leading expert in intelligence analysis. Cognitive Biases in Visualizations will be of interest to a wide audience from those studying cognitive biases to visualization designers and practitioners. It offers a choice of research frameworks, help with the design of user studies, and proposals for the effective measurement of biases. The impact of human visualization literacy, competence and human cognition on cognitive biases are also examined, as well as the notion of system-induced biases. The well referenced chapters provide an excellent starting point for gaining an awareness of the detrimental effect that some cognitive biases can have on users' decision-making. Human behavior is complex and we are only just starting to unravel the processes involved and investigate ways in which the computer can assist, however the final section supports the prospect that visual analytics, in particular, can counter some of the more common cognitive errors, which have been proven to be so costly.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 19th International Workshop on Combinatorial Image Analysis, IWCIA 2018, held in Porto, Portugal, in November 2018. The 18 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 32 submissions. The papers are grouped into two sections. The first one includes nine papers devoted to theoretical foundations of combinatorial image analysis, including digital geometry and topology, array grammars, tilings and patterns, discrete geometry in non-rectangular grids, and other technical tools for image analysis. The second part includes nine papers presenting application-driven research on topics such as discrete tomography, image segmentation, texture analysis, and medical imaging.

This edited volume presents advances in modeling and computational analysis techniques related to networks and online communities. It contains the best papers of notable scientists from the 4th European Network Intelligence Conference (ENIC 2017) that have been peer reviewed and expanded into the present format. The aim of this text is to share knowledge and experience as well as to present recent advances in the field. The book is a nice mix of basic research topics such as data-based centrality measures along with intriguing applied topics, for example, interaction decay patterns in online social communities. This book will appeal to students, professors, and researchers working in the fields of data science, computational social science, and social network analysis.

Based on talks from the 2015 and 2016 Combinatorial and Additive Number Theory (CANT) workshops at the City University of New York, these proceedings offer 19 peer-reviewed and edited papers on current topics in number theory. Held every year since 2003, the workshop series surveys state-of-the-art open problems in combinatorial and additive number theory and related parts of mathematics. Sumsets, partitions, convex polytopes and discrete geometry, Ramsey theory, primality testing, and cryptography are among the topics featured in this volume. Each contribution is dedicated to a specific topic that reflects the latest results by experts in the field. Researchers and graduate students interested in the current progress in number theory will find this selection of articles relevant and compelling.

Combining theoretical and practical aspects of topology, this book provides a comprehensive and self-contained introduction to topological methods for the analysis and visualization of scientific data. Theoretical concepts are presented in a painstaking but intuitive manner, with numerous high-quality color illustrations. Key algorithms for the computation and simplification of topological data representations are described in detail, and their application is carefully demonstrated in a chapter dedicated to concrete use cases. With its fine balance between theory and practice, "Topological Data Analysis for Scientific Visualization" constitutes an appealing introduction to the increasingly important topic of topological data analysis for lecturers, students and researchers.

This treatise presents an integrated perspective on the interplay of set theory and graph theory, providing an extensive selection of examples that highlight how methods from one theory can be used to better solve problems originated in the other. Features: explores the interrelationships between sets and graphs and their applications to finite combinatorics; introduces the fundamental graph-theoretical notions from the standpoint of both set theory and dyadic logic, and presents a discussion on set universes; explains how sets can conveniently model graphs, discussing set graphs and set-theoretic representations of claw-free graphs; investigates when it is convenient to represent sets by graphs, covering counting and encoding problems, the random generation of sets, and the analysis of infinite sets; presents excerpts of formal proofs concerning graphs, whose correctness was verified by means of an automated proof-assistant; contains numerous exercises, examples, definitions, problems and insight panels.

This monograph provides a self-contained introduction to symmetric functions and their use in enumerative combinatorics. It is the first book to explore many of the methods and results that the authors present. Numerous exercises are included throughout, along with full solutions, to illustrate concepts and also highlight many interesting mathematical ideas. The text begins by introducing fundamental combinatorial objects such as permutations and integer partitions, as well as generating functions. Symmetric functions are considered in the next chapter, with a unique emphasis on the combinatorics of the transition matrices between bases of symmetric functions. Chapter 3 uses this introductory material to describe how to find an assortment of generating functions for permutation statistics, and then these techniques are extended to find generating functions for a variety of objects in Chapter 4. The next two chapters present the Robinson-Schensted-Knuth algorithm and a method for proving Polya's enumeration theorem using symmetric functions. Chapters 7 and 8 are more specialized than the preceding ones, covering consecutive pattern matches in permutations, words, cycles, and alternating permutations and introducing the reciprocity method as a way to define ring homomorphisms with desirable properties. Counting with Symmetric Functions will appeal to graduate students and researchers in mathematics or related subjects who are interested in counting methods, generating functions, or symmetric functions. The unique approach taken and results and exercises explored by the authors make it an important contribution to the mathematical literature.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Combinatorial Optimization, ISCO 2018, held in Marrakesh, Marocco, in April 2018. The 35 revised full papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 75 submissions. The symposium aims to bring together researchers from all the communities related to combinatorial optimization, including algorithms and complexity, mathematical programming and operations research.

This book consists of contributions from experts, presenting a fruitful interplay between different approaches to discrete geometry. Most of the chapters were collected at the conference "Geometry and Symmetry" in Veszprem, Hungary from 29 June to 3 July 2015. The conference was dedicated to Karoly Bezdek and Egon Schulte on the occasion of their 60th birthdays, acknowledging their highly regarded contributions in these fields. While the classical problems of discrete geometry have a strong connection to geometric analysis, coding theory, symmetry groups, and number theory, their connection to combinatorics and optimization has become of particular importance. The last decades have seen a revival of interest in discrete geometric structures and their symmetry. The rapid development of abstract polytope theory has resulted in a rich theory featuring an attractive interplay of methods and tools from discrete geometry, group theory and geometry, combinatorial group theory, and hyperbolic geometry and topology. This book contains papers on new developments in these areas, including convex and abstract polytopes and their recent generalizations, tiling and packing, zonotopes, isoperimetric inequalities, and on the geometric and combinatorial aspects of linear optimization. The book is a valuable resource for researchers, both junior and senior, in the field of discrete geometry, combinatorics, or discrete optimization. Graduate students find state-of-the-art surveys and an open problem collection.

This collaborative book presents recent trends on the study of sequences, including combinatorics on words and symbolic dynamics, and new interdisciplinary links to group theory and number theory. Other chapters branch out from those areas into subfields of theoretical computer science, such as complexity theory and theory of automata. The book is built around four general themes: number theory and sequences, word combinatorics, normal numbers, and group theory. Those topics are rounded out by investigations into automatic and regular sequences, tilings and theory of computation, discrete dynamical systems, ergodic theory, numeration systems, automaton semigroups, and amenable groups. This volume is intended for use by graduate students or research mathematicians, as well as computer scientists who are working in automata theory and formal language theory. With its organization around unified themes, it would also be appropriate as a supplemental text for graduate level courses.

This textbook provides an introduction to the combinatorial and statistical aspects of commutative algebra with an emphasis on binomial ideals. In addition to thorough coverage of the basic concepts and theory, it explores current trends, results, and applications of binomial ideals to other areas of mathematics. The book begins with a brief, self-contained overview of the modern theory of Groebner bases and the necessary algebraic and homological concepts from commutative algebra. Binomials and binomial ideals are then considered in detail, along with a short introduction to convex polytopes. Chapters in the remainder of the text can be read independently and explore specific aspects of the theory of binomial ideals, including edge rings and edge polytopes, join-meet ideals of finite lattices, binomial edge ideals, ideals generated by 2-minors, and binomial ideals arising from statistics. Each chapter concludes with a set of exercises and a list of related topics and results that will complement and offer a better understanding of the material presented. Binomial Ideals is suitable for graduate students in courses on commutative algebra, algebraic combinatorics, and statistics. Additionally, researchers interested in any of these areas but familiar with only the basic facts of commutative algebra will find it to be a valuable resource.

Contributions in this volume focus on computationally efficient algorithms and rigorous mathematical theories for analyzing large-scale networks. Researchers and students in mathematics, economics, statistics, computer science and engineering will find this collection a valuable resource filled with the latest research in network analysis. Computational aspects and applications of large-scale networks in market models, neural networks, social networks, power transmission grids, maximum clique problem, telecommunication networks, and complexity graphs are included with new tools for efficient network analysis of large-scale networks. This proceeding is a result of the 7th International Conference in Network Analysis, held at the Higher School of Economics, Nizhny Novgorod in June 2017. The conference brought together scientists, engineers, and researchers from academia, industry, and government.

This volume examines mathematics as a product of the human mind and analyzes the language of "pure mathematics" from various advanced-level sources. Through analysis of the foundational texts of mathematics, it is demonstrated that math is a complex literary creation, containing objects, actors, actions, projection, prediction, planning, explanation, evaluation, roles, image schemas, metonymy, conceptual blending, and, of course, (natural) language. The book follows the narrative of mathematics in a typical order of presentation for a standard university-level algebra course, beginning with analysis of set theory and mappings and continuing along a path of increasing complexity. At each stage, primary concepts, axioms, definitions, and proofs will be examined in an effort to unfold the tell-tale traces of the basic human cognitive patterns of story and conceptual blending. This book will be of interest to mathematicians, teachers of mathematics, cognitive scientists, cognitive linguists, and anyone interested in the engaging question of how mathematics works and why it works so well.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 29th International Workshop on Combinatorial Algorithms, IWOCA 2018, held in Singapore, Singapore, in July 2018. The 31 regular papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 69 submissions. They cover diverse areas of combinatorical algorithms, complexity theory, graph theory and combinatorics, combinatorial optimization, cryptography and information security, algorithms on strings and graphs, graph drawing and labelling, computational algebra and geometry, computational biology, probabilistic and randomised algorithms, algorithms for big data analytics, and new paradigms of computation.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Computing and Combinatorics, COCOON 2018, held in Qing Dao, China, in July 2018. The 62 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 120 submissions. They deal with the areas of algorithms, theory of computation, computational complexity, and combinatorics related to computing.

The connective constant of a quasi-transitive infinite graph is a measure for the asymptotic growth rate of the number of self-avoiding walks of length n from a given starting vertex. On edge-labelled graphs the formal language of self-avoiding walks is generated by a formal grammar, which can be used to calculate the connective constant of the graph. Christian Lindorfer discusses the methods in some examples, including the infinite ladder-graph and the sandwich of two regular infinite trees.

This book gives a detailed survey of the main results on bent functions over finite fields, presents a systematic overview of their generalizations, variations and applications, considers open problems in classification and systematization of bent functions, and discusses proofs of several results. This book uniquely provides a necessary comprehensive coverage of bent functions.It serves as a useful reference for researchers in discrete mathematics, coding and cryptography. Students and professors in mathematics and computer science will also find the content valuable, especially those interested in mathematical foundations of cryptography. It can be used as a supplementary text for university courses on discrete mathematics, Boolean functions, or cryptography, and is appropriate for both basic classes for under-graduate students and advanced courses for specialists in cryptography and mathematics.

This book offers a detailed introduction to graph theoretic methods in profinite groups and applications to abstract groups. It is the first to provide a comprehensive treatment of the subject. The author begins by carefully developing relevant notions in topology, profinite groups and homology, including free products of profinite groups, cohomological methods in profinite groups, and fixed points of automorphisms of free pro-p groups. The final part of the book is dedicated to applications of the profinite theory to abstract groups, with sections on finitely generated subgroups of free groups, separability conditions in free and amalgamated products, and algorithms in free groups and finite monoids. Profinite Graphs and Groups will appeal to students and researchers interested in profinite groups, geometric group theory, graphs and connections with the theory of formal languages. A complete reference on the subject, the book includes historical and bibliographical notes as well as a discussion of open questions and suggestions for further reading.

This book offers an original and broad exploration of the fundamental methods in Clustering and Combinatorial Data Analysis, presenting new formulations and ideas within this very active field. With extensive introductions, formal and mathematical developments and real case studies, this book provides readers with a deeper understanding of the mutual relationships between these methods, which are clearly expressed with respect to three facets: logical, combinatorial and statistical. Using relational mathematical representation, all types of data structures can be handled in precise and unified ways which the author highlights in three stages: Clustering a set of descriptive attributes Clustering a set of objects or a set of object categories Establishing correspondence between these two dual clusterings Tools for interpreting the reasons of a given cluster or clustering are also included. Foundations and Methods in Combinatorial and Statistical Data Analysis and Clustering will be a valuable resource for students and researchers who are interested in the areas of Data Analysis, Clustering, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 28th International Workshopon Combinatorial Algorithms, IWOCA 2017, held in Newcastle, NSW, Australia, in July 2017.The 30 regular papers presented in this volume together with 5 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 55 submissions. They were organized in topical sessions named: approximation algorithms and hardness; computational complexity; computational geometry; graphs and combinatorics; graph colourings, labellings and power domination; heuristics; mixed integer programming; polynomial algorithms; privacy; and string algorithms.