Spring School on Combinatorics 2001

Past Spring Schools: Spring School 2000, Spring School 1999, Spring School 1998 (in Czech), Spring School 1997 (in Czech), Spring School 1996 (in Czech)

See also: List of the participants, List of the talks, Study texts

The Spring School on Combinatorics was held in Borova Lada, Czech Republic, and in Finsterau, Germany, from April 17 to April 25. 38 students and professors from 7 universities of 5 different countries participated. Participants enjoyed wonderful nature of Czech and German border mountains and made a lot of trips on foot, on bikes and one of the participants also on skis.

One of the participants from abroad came to Czech Republic before the beggining of Spring School. He was accomodated in a dormitory in Prague and visited the historical centre of Prague. There were arranged special busses for Spring School participants on April 17 from Prague to Borova Lada and on April 25 from Finsterau to Prague.

Eight different study texts were presented during Spring School 2001:

Jochen Alber, Rolf Niedermeier: Improved Tree Decomposition Based Algorithms for Parametrized Planar Dominating Set based on their paper Fixed parameter algorithms for planar dominating set and related problems
Imre Barany, Gyula Karolyi: Problems and Results Around the Erdos-Szekeres Convex Polygon Theorem
Bruno Codenotti: Graph Theory, Small Worlds, and the WEB
Ludek Kucera: Probability and Algorithms, check errata for this text
Jiri Matousek: Combinatorial Excursions to High-Dimensional Convex Geometry
Till Nierhoff: Approaches to approximate the Steiner tree problem in graphs
Zs. Tuza: Application of the set-pair method in extremal hypergraph theory
Zs. Tuza: Application of the set-pair method in extremal problems II

Students participating in Spring School selected one of the study texts before the beginning of Spring School and formed groups for presentations of each of the texts. They discussed in groups via e-mail the topic and the presentation. Each of the students prepared a talk of length of about 90 minutes. In addition Jochen Alber from the University of Tuebingen prepared a special talk about complexity of the problem of planar dominating sets. Several interesting open problems were presented during two open problem sessions.

The first part of Spring School 2001 was held in Borova Lada, Czech Republic, from April 17 to April 22. There was just little snow in the beginning of Spring School 2001, but it was snowing and there was quite a lot of snow at the end of the week. All the participants made several nice trips to surroundings of Borova Lada. Several participants enjoyed biking in the beginning of the week, but as time was proceeding, biking was getting harder due to snow. Robert Babilon could try (and tried) his skis at the end of the week.

There were a lot of opportunities for leisure time activities in Borova Lada. Besides hiking, biking and skiing, the participants improved their mood by playing guitar and singing songs. Most of the participants enjoyed playing table tennis in Borova Lada. The match between "Professor All Star Team" (Bruno Codenotti and Jarik Nesetril) and "Student All Star Team" (Jan Kara and Ondra Pangrac) attracted attention of the participants; the professors beat the students (2:1 - 14:21, 23:21, 21:18).

The transfer with carrying the blackboard across the border happened on Sunday. Robert Babilon went on his skis and the other participants had to go on foot in snow. The participants left Borova Lada on foot in the morning. Before reaching the border, professor Nesetril had a non-serious historical colonization speech as he had had last two years in an information place of Bucina. The border was reached before the noon.

The second part of Spring School 2001 was held in Finsterau, Germany, from Sunday April 22 to Wednesday May 25. The weather was cold in the beginning of our stay in Finsterau, but it got better during our stay. The participants could enjoy playing table tennis (although a standard table-tennis table was not available) and other games (especially table soccer) at the hostel. Almost all the participants visited the museum devoted to Baverian farm evolution; in the museum there are several reconstructed farms from the 19th century which you can view. Some of the participants reached Lusen pike as some other participants did last two years.

Spring School 2001 was full of fun; all the participants met new friends and also learnt some new knowledge. The participants left Spring School after its end looking forward the next year Spring School.