Design Research Group

Design in Combinatorics and Statistics

LMS/EPSRC Short Course
Queen Mary, University of London, 9-13 September 2002

LMS EPSRC Queen Mary
The London Mathematical Society Research Meetings Committee has approved a proposal for a Short Course entitled "Design in Combinatorics and Statistics" to take place at Queen Mary, University of London, in the week 9-13 September 2002. The course is sponsored by the London Mathematical Society and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

The course is organised by R. A. Bailey, Peter J. Cameron, Ruth Silverstone and Sharon Woolf.

Description

Many topics in Combinatorial Design originated in Statistics. Two-designs began life as balanced incomplete-block designs for agricultural field trials; symmetric designs from Hadamard matrices originated in efficient factorial designs for industrial experiments; association schemes were invented for partially balanced incomplete-block designs. In other instances there has been parallel development under different names; for example, nets are the same thing as square lattice designs and linear codes the same as the duals of fractional factorial designs.

However, the knowledge that these topics cross from Combinatorics into Statistics has been lost on both sides, particularly at beginning PhD level, with the result that there can be much reinvention of the wheel. The aim of this course is to give PhD students in both Combinatorics and Statistics the basic building blocks in the area and to give them the language to be able to understand one another's literature. Moreover, the course will give these PhD students an opportunity to meet other PhD students and PDRAs, both in their own area and in the other, and discuss their research interests in this wider group.

Lecture topics

There will be three short courses of lectures in the programme:

Combinatorial Design

This course, by Dr. Ian Anderson, University of Glasgow, will cover:

Statistical Design

This course, by Professor R. A. Bailey, Queen Mary, will cover:

Interface

This course, by Professor Peter Cameron, Queen Mary, will cover: In addition, there will be three guest lectures:

Further information

The class tutors are Peter Dobcsányi and Matt Ollis.

A provisional timetable is available here in PDF format. On Wednesday (time to be announced) there will be a presentation by Carol Wallace, Associate Mathematics Programme Manager at EPSRC, on funding opportunities; she will answer questions about the EPSRC mathematics programme.


Peter J. Cameron
13 August 2002.

Design Theory Pages at Queen Mary:
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