SPECIAL ISSUE ON 'COMBINATORIAL CONFIGURATIONS AND INFORMATION SCIENCES'

摘要

Combinatorial configurations were first studied by Euler in the 18th century. They arose throughout the 19th century in problems in algebra, number theory, topology, and group theory. However, the main thrust toward applications began in experimental design the-ory in statistics in the 1920s, leading to the development of combinatorial design theory. Information theory and coding theory provided a second major thrust in research, tying combinatorial configurations to more applications. Today applications arise in many different disciplines; cryptography in particular relies on characterizations of various combinatorial structures. Beyond this, applications in computing, networking, communi-cations, and bioinformatics are very numerous. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that combinatorial configurations arise in a fundamental way throughout the information sciences.