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Handbook of Combinatorial Designs

Charles J. Colbourn and Jeffrey H. Dinitz, editors
Publisher: 
Chapman & Hall/CRC
Publication Date: 
2007
Number of Pages: 
984
Format: 
Hardcover
Edition: 
2
Series: 
Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications 42
Price: 
129.95
ISBN: 
1584885068
Category: 
Handbook
BLL Rating: 

The Basic Library List Committee suggests that undergraduate mathematics libraries consider this book for acquisition.

[Reviewed by
Ezra Brown
, on
02/6/2007
]

Do you love combinatorial designs? If so, this is a book for you! This volume is an updated and greatly expanded version of the 1996 first edition. With more pages than Euler had publications and more than 211 references, it is just what you expect in a handbook — a comprehensive guide to Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Combinatorial Designs, but didn’t know where to look. The editors have done this by assembling 109 chapters within seven main sections, written individually and collectively by 110 contributors, all experts in the field. The contributors clearly took considerable care in their work: for the most part, this vast compendium is well written. The book has lists, tables, examples, diagrams, theorems, constructions, and even three pictures. (You guess who.)

Section 1 begins, most appropriately with the Fano Plane, also known as the (7,3,1) design. For, this beautiful and deceptively simple combinatorial object illustrates so many different ideas from the world of combinatorial designs: symmetry, balance, sets, arrays, graphs, finite geometries, Latin Squares, matrices, error-correcting codes, number theory, finite fields, groups, and even an optimal strategy for the Seven Hats Problem. They proceed immediately to one of the highlights, a section on the history of designs from ancient times up to 1950. Here is where you learn just how pivotal Thomas Kirkman was to the field, and how R. C. Bose’s 1939 paper found the field a collection of results and left it an important mathematical discipline.

Next, there are four sections devoted to four major areas of study. Section 2 treats block designs, and their generalizations, t-designs. A t-(v,k,λ) design is a v-set V together with a set B of k-subsets of V (the blocks) such that every t-subset of V is contained in exactly λ blocks. A block design is a 2-(v,k,λ) design. Section 2 also treats triple systems, Steiner systems, symmetric designs, and resolvable designs, including the famous Kirkman Schoolgirls Problem. Section 3 deals with the construction, enumeration and existence of Latin squares, mutually orthogonal Latin squares (MOLS) and orthogonal arrays, including an account of the history and eventual disproof of Euler’s Conjecture on MOLS.

Section 4 is concerned with partially balanced designs (PBD) and group divisible designs (GDD). A running example through this section is the famous 3x3 magic square — yes, that one, and you know how to construct it. Its twelve rows, columns and extended diagonals form a PBD, a GDD, a 2-(9,3,1) design, a resolvable design, and an affine plane of order three. In Section 5, we meet Hadamard matrices, Hadamard designs, and various generalizations of these. (The incidence matrix of the (7,3,1) design gives rise to a Hadamard matrix of order 8.)

Section 6, the longest section, consists of 65 short chapters on other types of combinatorial designs from Association Schemes to Youden Designs. There are chapters on magic squares, difference sets, Skolem and Langford sequences, Whist tournaments, Room squares, and designs intriguingly called SAMDRR (Spouse-Avoiding Mixed Doubles Round Robin) tournaments. Finally, Section 7 contains a wealth of information about other mathematical areas and their relation to combinatorial designs. These include such areas as number theory, graph theory, linear algebra, codes, finite groups, finite fields, and matroids.

The book contains some fascinating tidbits along the way. For example, the section on scheduling a tournament contains examples from Major League Baseball, the NFL, World Cup Soccer, the Czech National Hockey League, the World Motorcycle Speedway Championships, and jai-alai. Chapters 52 and 58 of Section 6 contain information on authentication codes, secrecy codes and secret-sharing schemes. Finally, the chapter on Latin Squares has a brief section on that most tantalizing and addictive game, Sudoku.

In their introduction, the editors state that the handbook is not designed to be used sequentially, and they are absolutely right. This vast book should not be read like a novel. Researchers in the field will find a chapter on their particular area of interest. If you are new to the area, read the introduction and the historical background first, then dive in. Order a copy for your school’s library, or (if you are a combinatorialist) for yourself. But be careful: combinatorial designs can be addictive!


Ezra Brown (brown@math.vt.edu) is Alumni Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at Virginia Tech, with degrees from Rice and LSU. He is a number theorist by trade, but his first publication was about tournaments and Hadamard matrices. He is a fairly regular contributor to the MAA journals. He sings (everything from blues to opera), plays a tolerable jazz piano, and his wife Jo is teaching him to be a gardener. He occasionally bakes biscuits for his students.


 PREFACE

INTRODUCTION
NEW! Opening the Door
NEW! Design Theory: Antiquity to 1950

BLOCK DESIGNS
2-(v, k, ?) Designs of Small Order
NEW! Triple Systems
BIBDs with Small Block Size
t-Designs with t = 3
Steiner Systems
Symmetric Designs
Resolvable and Near-Resolvable Designs

LATIN SQUARES
Latin Squares
Quasigroups
Mutually Orthogonal Latin Squares (MOLS)
Incomplete MOLS
Self-Orthogonal Latin Squares (SOLS)
Orthogonal Arrays of Index More Than One
Orthogonal Arrays of Strength More Than Two

PAIRWISE BALANCED DESIGNS
PBDs and GDDs: The Basics
PBDs: Recursive Constructions
PBD-Closure
NEW! Group Divisible Designs
PBDs, Frames, and Resolvability
Pairwise Balanced Designs as Linear Spaces

HADAMARD MATRICES AND RELATED DESIGNS
Hadamard Matrices and Hadamard Designs
Orthogonal Designs
D-Optimal Matrices
Bhaskar Rao Designs
Generalized Hadamard Matrices
Balanced Generalized Weighing Matrices and Conference Matrices
Sequence Correlation
Complementary, Base and Turyn Sequences
NEW! Optical Orthogonal Codes

OTHER COMBINATORIAL DESIGNS
Association Schemes
Balanced Ternary Designs
Balanced Tournament Designs
NEW! Bent Functions
NEW! Block-Transitive Designs
Complete Mappings and Sequencings of Finite Groups
Configurations
Correlation-Immune and Resilient Functions
Costas Arrays
NEW! Covering Arrays
Coverings
Cycle Decompositions
Defining Sets
NEW! Deletion-Correcting Codes
Derandomization
Difference Families
Difference Matrices
Difference Sets
Difference Triangle Sets
Directed Designs
Factorial Designs
Frequency Squares and Hypercubes
Generalized Quadrangles
Graph Decompositions
NEW! Graph Embeddings and Designs
Graphical Designs
NEW! Grooming
Hall Triple Systems
Howell Designs
NEW! Infinite Designs
Linear Spaces: Geometric Aspects
Lotto Designs
NEW! Low Density Parity Check Codes
NEW! Magic Squares
Mendelsohn Designs
NEW! Nested Designs
Optimality and Efficiency: Comparing Block Designs
Ordered Designs, Perpendicular Arrays and Permutation Sets
Orthogonal Main Effect Plans
Packings
Partial Geometries
Partially Balanced Incomplete Block Designs
NEW! Perfect Hash Families
NEW! Permutation Codes and Arrays
NEW! Permutation Polynomials
NEW! Pooling Designs
NEW! Quasi-3 Designs
Quasi-Symmetric Designs
(r, ?)-designs
Room Squares
Scheduling a Tournament
Secrecy and Authentication Codes
Skolem and Langford Sequences
Spherical Designs
Starters
Superimposed Codes and Combinatorial Group Testing
NEW! Supersimple Designs
Threshold and Ramp Schemes
(t,m,s)-Nets
Trades
NEW! Turán Systems
Tuscan Squares
t-Wise Balanced Designs
Whist Tournaments
Youden Squares and Generalized Youden Designs

RELATED MATHEMATICS
Codes
Finite Geometry
NEW! Divisible Semiplanes
Graphs and Multigraphs
Factorizations of Graphs
Computational Methods in Design Theory
NEW! Linear Algebra and Designs
Number Theory and Finite Fields
Finite Groups and Designs
NEW! Designs and Matroids
Strongly Regular Graphs
NEW! Directed Strongly Regular Graphs
Two-Graphs

BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX