Leave nothing to chance. This cliche embodies the common belief that ran- domness has no place in carefully planned methodologies, every step should be spelled out, each i dotted and each t crossed. In discrete mathematics at least, nothing could be further from the truth. Introducing random choices into algorithms can improve their performance. The application of proba- bilistic tools has led to the resolution of combinatorial problems which had resisted attack for decades. The chapters in this volume explore and celebrate this fact. Our intention was to bring together, for the first time,...

Leave nothing to chance. This cliche embodies the common belief that ran- domness has no place in carefully planned methodologies, every step should be spelled out, each i dotted and each t crossed. In discrete mathematics at least, nothing could be further from the truth. Introducing random choices into algorithms can improve their performance. The application of proba- bilistic tools has led to the resolution of combinatorial problems which had resisted attack for decades. The chapters in this volume explore and celebrate this fact. Our intention was to bring together, for the first time,...