The book gives an accessible account of modern probabilistic methods for analyzing combinatorial structures and algorithms. It will be an useful guide for graduate students and researchers.Special features included: a simple treatment of Talagrand's inequalities and their applications; an overview and many carefully worked out examples of the probabilistic analysis of combinatorial algorithms; a discussion of the "exact simulation" algorithm (in the context of Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods); a general method for finding asymptotically optimal or near optimal graph colouring, showing how the probabilistic method may be fine-tuned to exploit the structure of the underlying graph; a succinct treatment of randomized algorithms and derandomization techniques.

Professor Dominic Welsh has made significant contributions to the fields of combinatorics and discrete probability, including matroids, complexity, and percolation, and has taught, influenced and inspired generations of students and researchers in mathematics. This volume summarizes and reviews the consistent themes from his work through a series of articles written by renowned experts. These articles contain original research work, set in a broader context by the inclusion of review material. As a reference text in its own right, this book will be valuable to academic researchers, research students, and others seeking an introduction to the relevant contemporary aspects of these fields.

The theory of random graphs is a vital part of the education of any researcher entering the fascinating world of combinatorics. However, due to their diverse nature, the geometric and structural aspects of the theory often remain an obscure part of the formative study of young combinatorialists and probabilists. Moreover, the theory itself, even in its most basic forms, is often considered too advanced to be part of undergraduate curricula, and those who are interested usually learn it mostly through self-study, covering a lot of its fundamentals but little of the more recent developments. This book provides a self-contained and concise introduction to recent developments and techniques for classical problems in the theory of random graphs. Moreover, it covers geometric and topological aspects of the theory and introduces the reader to the diversity and depth of the methods that have been devised in this context.