ENGLISH

Ten Lectures on the Probabilistic Method

By Joel Spencer

Book information

Publisher
Society for Industrial Mathematics
Year
1987
ISBN
0898713250
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
6 MB (6798006 bytes)
Series
CBMS-NSF Regional Conference Series in Applied Mathematics
Edition
2
Pages
97\97
Time added
2010-04-25 21:59:20

Description

This update of the 1987 title of the same name is an examination of what is currently known about the probabilistic method, written by one of its principal developers. Based on the notes from Spencer's 1986 series of ten lectures, this new edition contains an additional lecture: The Janson Inequalities. These inequalities allow accurate approximation of extremely small probabilities. A new algorithmic approach to the Lovász Local Lemma, attributed to Jozsef Beck, has been added to Lecture 8, as well. Throughout the monograph, Spencer retains the informal style of his original lecture notes and emphasizes the methodology, shunning the more technical "best possible" results in favor of clearer exposition. The book is not encyclopedic--it contains only those examples that clearly display the methodology. The probabilistic method is a powerful tool in graph theory, combinatorics, and theoretical computer science. It allows one to prove the existence of objects with certain properties (e.g., colorings) by showing that an appropriately defined random object has positive probability of having those properties.

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