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Prof Jozef Skokan

This course is available on the MSc in Applicable Mathematics and MSc in Operations Research & Analytics. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

Students should be taking the course MA407 Algorithms and Computation or have taken an equivalent course to provide a basic knowledge of algorithms, and should have experience with proofs and proof techniques used in pure mathematics.

This course provides an introduction to discrete mathematics, particularly graph theory.  Emphasis will be placed on the algorithmic aspects of the area.

Topics to be covered include: Brief Introduction to discrete mathematics and graph theoretic terminology; Ramsey's Theorem; matchings and Hall's Theorem; graph search algorithms; stable marriages and the Gale-Shapley Theorem; network flows and the Ford-Fulkerson Theorem; connectivity and Menger's Theorems; graph colouring and Brooks' Theorem; and other topics that may vary from year to year.

20 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the MT. 2 hours of lectures in the ST.

Students will be expected to produce 2 exercises in the MT.

Weekly exercises are set and solved in the seminar.

Norman L. Biggs, Discrete Mathematics, Oxford University Press;

T H Cormen, C E Leiserson & R Rivest and C Stein, Introduction to Algorithms, Cambridge University Press;

R Diestel, Graph Theory, Springer;

H S Wilf, Algorithms and Complexity, Prentice Hall.

Several of these texts are available online.  More information, plus additional notes, will be provided during the course.

Exam (75%, duration: 2 hours) in the summer exam period.
Coursework (25%) in the MT.