Combinatorial Algorithms: Generation, Enumeration, and Search: 7 (Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications) - Hardcover

Kreher, Donald L.; Stinson, Douglas R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 084933988X ISBN 13: 9780849339882

Publisher: CRC Press, 1998

Synopsis

This textbook thoroughly outlines combinatorial algorithms for generation, enumeration, and search. Topics include backtracking and heuristic search methods applied to various combinatorial structures, such as:

Combinations

Permutations

Graphs

Designs

Many classical areas are covered as well as new research topics not included in most existing texts, such as:

Group algorithms

Graph isomorphism

Hill-climbing

Heuristic search algorithms

This work serves as an exceptional textbook for a modern course in combinatorial algorithms, providing a unified and focused collection of recent topics of interest in the area. The authors, synthesizing material that can only be found scattered through many different sources, introduce the most important combinatorial algorithmic techniques - thus creating an accessible, comprehensive text that students of mathematics, electrical engineering, and computer science can understand without needing a prior course on combinatorics.

About this title

Review

"Very clear exposition. I jumped right into [the] heuristic methods chapter and understood it almost instantly..." - Dean H. Judson, Ph.D., Nevada State Demographer "book serves as an introduction to the basic problems and methodsstyle is clear, transparentThe algorithmic problems are always considered and they are in the center of the discussionhas a fresh approach to combinatorics that is available for readers, students in computer science, electrical engineering without any background in mathematics." - Piter Hajnal, Acta Science Math

From the Author

Combinatorial Algorithms: Generation enumeration and Search

Our objective in writing this book was to produce a general, introductory textbook on the subject of combinatorial algorithms.

We have provided a reasonable amount of mathematical background where it is needed, since an understanding of the algorithms is not possible without an understanding of the underlying mathematics. We give informal descriptions of the many algorithms in this book, along with more precise pseudo-code that can easily be converted to working programs. C implementations of all the algorithms are available for free downloading from our web site. There are also many examples in the book to illustrate the workings of the algorithms.

There is probably more material in this book than can be covered in one semester. We hope that it is possible to base several different types of courses on this book. An introductory course suitable for undergraduate students could cover most of the material in Chapters 1-5. A second or graduate course could concentrate on the more advanced material in Chapters 6-8. We hope that, aside from its primary purpose as a textbook, researchers and practitioners in all areas of combinatorial computing will find this book useful as a source of algorithms for practical use.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Structures and Algorithms
Chapter 2. Generating Elementary Combinatorial Objects
Chapter 3. More Topics in Combinatorial Generation
Chapter 4. Backtracking Algorithms
Chapter 5. Heuristic Search
Chapter 6. Groups and Symmetry
Chapter 7. Computing Isomorphism
Chapter 8. Basis Reduction

Edition details

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 084933988X
• ISBN 13: 9780849339882
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 342