MA 318: Combinatorics

Instructor:	Arvind Ayyer
Office:	X-15 (new wing)
Phone number:	(2293) 3215
Email:	(First name) at math dot iisc dot ernet dot in
Class Timings:	Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:00–3:30pm.
Classroom:	LH I, Mathematics Department (first floor)
Office hours:	By appointment
Textbook:	Generatingfunctionology by Herbert Wilf ISBN-13 - 978-1568812793 Freely downloadable from here Enumerative Combinatorics: Volume 1 (Second Edition) by Richard P. Stanley ISBN-13 - 978-1107602625 Older version freely downloadable from here

Course Prerequisites

Calculus, Linear algebra and some exposure to proofs and abstract mathematics.
Programming in Sage will be a part of every lecture. Students will need to bring a laptop with access to the IISc WLAN.

Course Description

Counting problems in sets, multisets, permutations, partitions, trees, tableaux;
ordinary and exponential generating functions;
posets and principle of inclusion-exclusion, the transfer matrix method;
the exponential formula, Polya theory;
bijections, combinatorial identities and the WZ method.

Computer Algebra

We will spend a couple of lectures learning symbolic programming in Sage on the Sage Math Cloud.

Exams

All exams will be closed book, closed notes, and
no calculators or electronic devices are allowed.
No communication among the students will be tolerated.
There will be no make up exams.

The date for the midterm and final will be announced later.