MPS352 Combinatorics
Lecturer: Neil Strickland

I am no longer teaching this course but have left this page in place in case anyone finds it useful.

Lecture notes

PDF download HTML version

Both versions of the notes contain links to various interactive demonstrations (described below) and videos.

Interactive demonstrations

There is a set of interactive demonstrations explaining many of the ideas in the course. I will talk through these in lectures, there are attached YouTube videos, and you can try them yourself at other times. These are experimental and under development. I welcome comments about the extent to which they are comprehensible, useful or interesting.

Coding

Most of the ideas in this course can be implemented by computers. Students who are interested in such things can find Python code in a Github repository. The Python code is partly translated from the Javascript code that drives the interactive demonstrations. That Javascript code is in another Github repository. You can ignore all this if you are not interested; I will at most make occasional comments about it in lectures.

Recommended books

The main recommended book is Aspects of Combinatorics by Victor Bryant
(Amazon, Google Books).
The author taught combinatorics in Sheffield for many years.

Another possibility is A First Course in Combinatorial Mathematics by Ian Anderson
(Amazon, Google Books).

Past exam papers

2024-25ExamSolutions
2023-24ExamSolutions
2022-23ExamSolutions
2021-22ExamSolutions
2020-21ExamSolutions
2019-20ExamSolutions
2018-19ExamSolutions
2017-18ExamSolutions
2016-17ExamSolutions
2015-16ExamSolutions