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Combinatorial Design
Combinatorial design theory is the part of combinatorial mathematics that deals with the existence, construction and properties of systems of finite sets whose arrangements satisfy generalized concepts of ''balance'' and/or ''symmetry''. These concepts are not made precise so that a wide range of objects can be thought of as being under the same umbrella. At times this might involve the numerical sizes of set intersections as in block designs, while at other times it could involve the spatial arrangement of entries in an array as in sudoku grids. Combinatorial design theory can be applied to the area of design of experiments. Some of the basic theory of combinatorial designs originated in the statistician Ronald Fisher's work on the design of biological experiments. Modern applications are also found in a wide gamut of areas including finite geometry, tournament scheduling, lotteries, mathematical chemistry, mathematical biology, algorithm design and analysis, networking, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Combinatorics
Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and as an end to obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many applications ranging from logic to statistical physics and from evolutionary biology to computer science. Combinatorics is well known for the breadth of the problems it tackles. Combinatorial problems arise in many areas of pure mathematics, notably in algebra, probability theory, topology, and geometry, as well as in its many application areas. Many combinatorial questions have historically been considered in isolation, giving an ''ad hoc'' solution to a problem arising in some mathematical context. In the later twentieth century, however, powerful and general theoretical methods were developed, making combinatorics into an independent branch of mathematics in its own right. One of the oldest and most accessible parts of combinatorics ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Prime Power
In mathematics, a prime power is a positive integer which is a positive integer power of a single prime number. For example: , and are prime powers, while , and are not. The sequence of prime powers begins: 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 16, 17, 19, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 32, 37, 41, 43, 47, 49, 53, 59, 61, 64, 67, 71, 73, 79, 81, 83, 89, 97, 101, 103, 107, 109, 113, 121, 125, 127, 128, 131, 137, 139, 149, 151, 157, 163, 167, 169, 173, 179, 181, 191, 193, 197, 199, 211, 223, 227, 229, 233, 239, 241, 243, 251, … . The prime powers are those positive integers that are divisible by exactly one prime number; in particular, the number 1 is not a prime power. Prime powers are also called primary numbers, as in the primary decomposition. Properties Algebraic properties Prime powers are powers of prime numbers. Every prime power (except powers of 2 greater than 4) has a primitive root; thus the multiplicative group of integers modulo ''p''''n'' (that is, the group of units of the ri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Round-robin Tournament
A round-robin tournament or all-play-all tournament is a competition format in which each contestant meets every other participant, usually in turn.''Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged'' (1971, G. & C. Merriam Co), p.1980. A round-robin contrasts with an elimination tournament, wherein participants are eliminated after a certain number of wins or losses. Terminology The term ''round-robin'' is derived from the French term ('ribbon'). Over time, the term became idiomized to ''robin''. In a ''single round-robin'' schedule, each participant plays every other participant once. If each participant plays all others twice, this is frequently called a ''double round-robin''. The term is rarely used when all participants play one another more than twice, and is never used when one participant plays others an unequal number of times, as is the case in almost all of the major North American professional sports leagues. In the United Kingdom, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Kirkman's Schoolgirl Problem
Kirkman's schoolgirl problem is a problem in combinatorics proposed by Thomas Penyngton Kirkman in 1850 as Query VI in '' The Lady's and Gentleman's Diary'' (pg.48). The problem states: Fifteen young ladies in a school walk out three abreast for seven days in succession: it is required to arrange them daily so that no two shall walk twice abreast. Solutions A solution to this problem is an example of a ''Kirkman triple system'', which is a Steiner triple system having a ''parallelism'', that is, a partition of the blocks of the triple system into parallel classes which are themselves partitions of the points into disjoint blocks. Such Steiner systems that have a parallelism are also called ''resolvable''. There are exactly seven non-isomorphic solutions to the schoolgirl problem, as originally listed by Frank Nelson Cole in ''Kirkman Parades'' in 1922. The seven solutions are summarized in the table below, denoting the 15 girls with the letters A to O. From the number o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Recreational Mathematics
Recreational mathematics is mathematics carried out for recreation (entertainment) rather than as a strictly research-and-application-based professional activity or as a part of a student's formal education. Although it is not necessarily limited to being an endeavor for amateurs, many topics in this field require no knowledge of advanced mathematics. Recreational mathematics involves mathematical puzzles and games, often appealing to children and untrained adults and inspiring their further study of the subject. The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) includes recreational mathematics as one of its seventeen Special Interest Groups, commenting: Mathematical competitions (such as those sponsored by mathematical associations) are also categorized under recreational mathematics. Topics Some of the more well-known topics in recreational mathematics are Rubik's Cubes, magic squares, fractals, logic puzzles and mathematical chess problems, but this area of mathemati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Steiner System
250px, thumbnail, The Fano plane is a Steiner triple system S(2,3,7). The blocks are the 7 lines, each containing 3 points. Every pair of points belongs to a unique line. In combinatorial mathematics, a Steiner system (named after Jakob Steiner) is a type of block design, specifically a t-design with λ = 1 and ''t'' = 2 or (recently) ''t'' ≥ 2. A Steiner system with parameters ''t'', ''k'', ''n'', written S(''t'',''k'',''n''), is an ''n''-element set ''S'' together with a set of ''k''-element subsets of ''S'' (called blocks) with the property that each ''t''-element subset of ''S'' is contained in exactly one block. In an alternative notation for block designs, an S(''t'',''k'',''n'') would be a ''t''-(''n'',''k'',1) design. This definition is relatively new. The classical definition of Steiner systems also required that ''k'' = ''t'' + 1. An S(2,3,''n'') was (and still is) called a ''Steiner triple'' (or ''triad'') ''system'', while an S(3,4,''n'') is called a ''Steiner ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Latin Square
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area around Rome, Italy. Through the expansion of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language in the Italian Peninsula and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. It has greatly influenced many languages, including English, having contributed many words to the English lexicon, particularly after the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest. Latin roots appear frequently in the technical vocabulary used by fields such as theology, the sciences, medicine, and law. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had evolved into standardized Classical Latin. Vulgar Latin refers to the less prestigious colloquial registers, attested in inscriptions and some literary works such as those of the comic playwrights Plautus and Terence and the author Petronius. Whil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Magic Square
In mathematics, especially History of mathematics, historical and recreational mathematics, a square array of numbers, usually positive integers, is called a magic square if the sums of the numbers in each row, each column, and both main diagonals are the same. The "order" of the magic square is the number of integers along one side (''n''), and the constant sum is called the "magic constant". If the array includes just the positive integers 1,2,...,n^2, the magic square is said to be "normal". Some authors take "magic square" to mean "normal magic square". Magic squares that include repeated entries do not fall under this definition and are referred to as "trivial". Some well-known examples, including the #Sagrada Família magic square, Sagrada Família magic square and the #Parker square, Parker square, are trivial in this sense. When all the rows and columns but not both diagonals sum to the magic constant, this gives a semimagic square (sometimes called orthomagic square). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Lo Shu Square
The Luoshu (pinyin), Lo Shu (Wade-Giles), or Nine Halls Diagram is an Ancient China, ancient Chinese diagram and named for the Luo River (Henan), Luo River near Luoyang, Henan. The Luoshu appears in Chinese mythology, myths concerning the Chinese inventions, invention of Chinese writing, writing by Cangjie and other culture heroes. It is a unique normal magic square of order three. It is usually paired with the Yellow River Map, River Map or Hetunamed in reference to the Yellow Riverand used with the River Map in various contexts involving Chinese geomancy, Chinese numerology, numerology, Chinese philosophy, philosophy, and early natural science. Traditions The Lo Shu is part of the legacy of ancient Chinese mathematical and divination (cf. the I Ching ) traditions, and is an important emblem in ''Feng Shui'' ()—the art of geomancy concerned with the placement of objects in relation to the flow of qi (), or "natural energy". History A Chinese legend concerning the pre-histori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Projective Plane
In mathematics, a projective plane is a geometric structure that extends the concept of a plane (geometry), plane. In the ordinary Euclidean plane, two lines typically intersect at a single point, but there are some pairs of lines (namely, parallel lines) that do not intersect. A projective plane can be thought of as an ordinary plane equipped with additional "points at infinity" where parallel lines intersect. Thus ''any'' two distinct lines in a projective plane intersect at exactly one point. Renaissance artists, in developing the techniques of drawing in Perspective (graphical)#Renaissance, perspective, laid the groundwork for this mathematical topic. The archetypical example is the real projective plane, also known as the extended Euclidean plane. This example, in slightly different guises, is important in algebraic geometry, topology and projective geometry where it may be denoted variously by , RP2, or P2(R), among other notations. There are many other projective planes, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Quadratic Form
In mathematics, a quadratic form is a polynomial with terms all of degree two (" form" is another name for a homogeneous polynomial). For example, 4x^2 + 2xy - 3y^2 is a quadratic form in the variables and . The coefficients usually belong to a fixed field , such as the real or complex numbers, and one speaks of a quadratic form ''over'' . Over the reals, a quadratic form is said to be '' definite'' if it takes the value zero only when all its variables are simultaneously zero; otherwise it is '' isotropic''. Quadratic forms occupy a central place in various branches of mathematics, including number theory, linear algebra, group theory ( orthogonal groups), differential geometry (the Riemannian metric, the second fundamental form), differential topology ( intersection forms of manifolds, especially four-manifolds), Lie theory (the Killing form), and statistics (where the exponent of a zero-mean multivariate normal distribution has the quadratic form -\mathbf^\math ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Finite Field
In mathematics, a finite field or Galois field (so-named in honor of Évariste Galois) is a field (mathematics), field that contains a finite number of Element (mathematics), elements. As with any field, a finite field is a Set (mathematics), set on which the operations of multiplication, addition, subtraction and division are defined and satisfy certain basic rules. The most common examples of finite fields are the integers mod n, integers mod p when p is a prime number. The ''order'' of a finite field is its number of elements, which is either a prime number or a prime power. For every prime number p and every positive integer k there are fields of order p^k. All finite fields of a given order are isomorphism, isomorphic. Finite fields are fundamental in a number of areas of mathematics and computer science, including number theory, algebraic geometry, Galois theory, finite geometry, cryptography and coding theory. Properties A finite field is a finite set that is a fiel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |