Counting, Sampling and Integrating: Algorithms and Complexity (Lectures in Mathematics. ETH Zuerich)

The subject of these notes is counting (of combinatorial structures) and related topics, viewed from a computational perspective. A major theme of the book is the idea of accumulating information about a set of combinatorial structures by performing a random walk (i.e., simulating a Markov chain) on those structures. These notes will be of value not only to teachers of postgraduate courses on these topics, but also to established researchers. For the first time this body of knowledge has been brought together in a single volume.