Category Archives: exposition

a post aimed to teach something

1247

Posted on 28/02/2015 by

Yesterday my colleague Collin Bleak sent me an email containing the number 1247. I will explain why this made me so pleased. Automata Our problem concerns automata. If you know Collin, you may suspect that it has something to do … Continue reading →

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The combinatorial hierarchy

Posted on 22/02/2015 by

Following up a conversation with John Amson at Rufflets Hotel, just outside St Andrews, I was led to a paper on combinatorial physics: Ted Bastin, H. Pierre Noyes, John Amson, Clive W. Kilmister: On the physical interpretation and the mathematical … Continue reading →

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Orbital combinatorics

Posted on 11/02/2015 by

Yesterday I went to Edinburgh to give a colloquium talk about synchronization, including the recent stuff about butterflies. The day before, I had discussed Artur Schäfer’s work with him, and he expressed a hope that if he went to the … Continue reading →

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From M12 to M24

Posted on 31/01/2015 by

On 20 January 2015, Paul Hjelmstad posted the following question on the GAP forum: Is there an easy way to generate a Steiner system S(5,8,24) for the Mathieu Group M24, if a Steiner system S(5,6,12) for the Mathieu Group M12 … Continue reading →

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Chains of semigroups

Posted on 27/01/2015 by

I have written here about the lovely formula for the length of the longest chain of subgroups in the symmetric group Sn: take n, increase it by 50% (rounding up if necessary), subtract the number of ones in the base … Continue reading →

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Bijective proofs

Posted on 04/01/2015 by

A fourth proof Last month I described three proofs of the formula for the number of ways to choose k objects from a set of n, if repetition is allowed and order is not significant; it is the same as … Continue reading →

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Another formula

Posted on 25/12/2014 by

Anyone who knows about the Principle of Inclusion and Exclusion will suspect that it can be applied to the relationship between sampling with and without replacement. In order to find the formula for sampling without replacement, we must be able … Continue reading →

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