We study the problem of determining the minimum number $f(n,k,d)$ of affine subspaces of codimension $d$ that are required to cover all points of $\mathbb{F}_2^n\setminus \{\vec{0}\}$ at least $k$ times while covering the origin at most $k - 1$ times. The case $k=1$ is a classic result of Jamison, which was independently obtained by Brouwer and Schrijver for $d = 1$. The value of $f(n,1,1)$ also follows from a well-known theorem of Alon and Füredi about coverings of finite grids in affine spaces over arbitrary fields. Here we determine the value of this function exactly in various ranges of the parameters. In particular, we prove that for $k\geq 2^{n-d-1}$ we have $f(n,k,d)=2^d k-\left\lfloor{\frac{k}{2^{n-d}}}\right\rfloor$, while for $n \gt 2^{2^d k-k-d+1}$ we have $f(n,k,d)=n + 2^d k -d-2$, and obtain asymptotic results between these two ranges. While previous work in this direction has primarily employed the polynomial method, we prove our results through more direct combinatorial and probabilistic arguments, and also exploit a connection to coding theory.

We discuss several ways of packing a hyperbolic surface with circles (of either varying radii or all being congruent) or horocycles, and note down some observations related to their symmetries (or the absence thereof).

We demonstrate that every difference set in a finite Abelian group is equivalent to a certain ‘regular’ covering of the lattice $ A_n = \{ \boldsymbol {x} \in \mathbb {Z} ^{n+1} : \sum _{i} x_i = 0 \} $ with balls of radius $ 2 $ under the $ \ell _1 $ metric (or, equivalently, a covering of the integer lattice $ \mathbb {Z} ^n $ with balls of radius $ 1 $ under a slightly different metric). For planar difference sets, the covering is also a packing, and therefore a tiling, of $ A_n $ . This observation leads to a geometric reformulation of the prime power conjecture and of other statements involving Abelian difference sets.

A subgraph of an edge-coloured graph is called rainbow if all its edges have different colours. We prove a rainbow version of the blow-up lemma of Komlós, Sárközy, and Szemerédi that applies to almost optimally bounded colourings. A corollary of this is that there exists a rainbow copy of any bounded-degree spanning subgraph H in a quasirandom host graph G, assuming that the edge-colouring of G fulfills a boundedness condition that is asymptotically best possible.

This has many applications beyond rainbow colourings: for example, to graph decompositions, orthogonal double covers, and graph labellings.

The triangle packing number v(G) of a graph G is the maximum size of a set of edge-disjoint triangles in G. Tuza conjectured that in any graph G there exists a set of at most 2v(G) edges intersecting every triangle in G. We show that Tuza’s conjecture holds in the random graph G = G(n, m), when m ⩽ 0.2403n3/2 or m ⩾ 2.1243n3/2. This is done by analysing a greedy algorithm for finding large triangle packings in random graphs.

Let V be an n-set, and let X be a random variable taking values in the power-set of V. Suppose we are given a sequence of random coupons $X_1, X_2, \ldots $ , where the $X_i$ are independent random variables with distribution given by X. The covering time T is the smallest integer $t\geq 0$ such that $\bigcup_{i=1}^t X_i=V$ . The distribution of T is important in many applications in combinatorial probability, and has been extensively studied. However the literature has focused almost exclusively on the case where X is assumed to be symmetric and/or uniform in some way.

In this paper we study the covering time for much more general random variables X; we give general criteria for T being sharply concentrated around its mean, precise tools to estimate that mean, as well as examples where T fails to be concentrated and when structural properties in the distribution of X allow for a very different behaviour of T relative to the symmetric/uniform case.

We raise and investigate the following problem which one can regard as a very close relative of the densest sphere packing problem. If the Euclidean 3-space is partitioned into convex cells each containing a unit ball, how should the shapes of the cells be designed to minimize the average surface area of the cells? In particular, we prove that the average surface area in question is always at least

A detachment of a hypergraph is formed by splitting each vertex into one or more subvertices, and sharing the incident edges arbitrarily among the subvertices. For a given edge-coloured hypergraph , we prove that there exists a detachment such that the degree of each vertex and the multiplicity of each edge in (and each colour class of ) are shared fairly among the subvertices in (and each colour class of , respectively).

Let be a hypergraph with vertex partition {V1,. . .,Vn}, |Vi| = pi for 1 ≤ i ≤ n such that there are λi edges of size hi incident with every hi vertices, at most one vertex from each part for 1 ≤ i ≤ m (so no edge is incident with more than one vertex of a part). We use our detachment theorem to show that the obvious necessary conditions for to be expressed as the union 1 ∪ ··· ∪ k of k edge-disjoint factors, where for 1 ≤ i ≤ k, i is ri-regular, are also sufficient. Baranyai solved the case of h1 = ··· = hm, λ1 = ··· = λm = 1, p1 = ··· = pm, r1 = ··· = rk. Berge and Johnson (and later Brouwer and Tijdeman, respectively) considered (and solved, respectively) the case of hi = i, 1 ≤ i ≤ m, p1 = ··· = pm = λ1 = ··· = λm = r1 = ··· = rk = 1. We also extend our result to the case where each i is almost regular.

Let $D$ be a family of $k$-subsets (called blocks) of a $v$-set $X\left( v \right)$. Then $D$ is a $\left( v,\,k,\,t \right)$ covering design or covering if every $t$-subset of $X\left( v \right)$ is contained in at least one block of $D$. The number of blocks is the size of the covering, and the minimum size of the covering is called the covering number. In this paper we consider the case $t\,=\,2$, and find several infinite classes of covering numbers. We also give upper bounds on other classes of covering numbers.

Let $K$ be a convex body in ${{\mathbf{E}}^{d}}$ and denote by ${{C}_{n}}$ the set of centroids of $n$ non-overlapping translates of $K$. For $\varrho \,>\,0$, assume that the parallel body conv ${{C}_{n}}\,+\,\varrho K$ of conv ${{C}_{n}}$ has minimal volume. The notion of parametric density (see [21]) provides a bridge between finite and infinite packings (see [4] or [14]). It is known that there exists a maximal ${{\varrho }_{s}}(K)\,\ge \,1/(32{{d}^{2}})$ such that conv ${{C}_{n}}$ is a segment for $\varrho \,<\,{{\varrho }_{s}}$ (see [5]). We prove the existence of a minimal ${{\varrho }_{c}}(K)\,\le \,d\,+\,1$ such that if $\varrho \,>\,{{\varrho }_{c}}$ and $n$ is large then the shape of conv ${{C}_{n}}$ can not be too far from the shape of $K$. For $d\,=\,2$, we verify that ${{\varrho }_{s\,}}\,=\,{{\varrho }_{c}}$. For $d\,\ge \,3$, we present the first example of a convex body with known ${{\varrho }_{s}}$ and ${{\varrho }_{c}}$; namely, we have ${{\varrho }_{s}}\,=\,{{\varrho }_{c}}\,=\,1$ for the parallelotope.