Covering of Subspaces by Subspaces

Lower and upper bounds on the size of a covering of subspaces in the Grassmann graph \cG_q(n,r) by subspaces from the Grassmann graph \cG_q(n,k), $k \geq r$, are discussed. The problem is of interest from four points of view: coding theory, combinatorial designs, $q$-analogs, and projective geometry. In particular we examine coverings based on lifted maximum rank distance codes, combined with spreads and a recursive construction. New constructions are given for $q=2$ with $r=2$ or $r=3$. We discuss the density for some of these coverings. Tables for the best known coverings, for $q=2$ and $5 \leq n \leq 10$, are presented. We present some questions concerning possible constructions of new coverings of smaller size.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:0805.352

Problems on q-Analogs in Coding Theory

The interest in $q$-analogs of codes and designs has been increased in the last few years as a consequence of their new application in error-correction for random network coding. There are many interesting theoretical, algebraic, and combinatorial coding problems concerning these q-analogs which remained unsolved. The first goal of this paper is to make a short summary of the large amount of research which was done in the area mainly in the last few years and to provide most of the relevant references. The second goal of this paper is to present one hundred open questions and problems for future research, whose solution will advance the knowledge in this area. The third goal of this paper is to present and start some directions in solving some of these problems.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:0805.3528 by other author

Rotated sphere packing designs

We propose a new class of space-filling designs called rotated sphere packing designs for computer experiments. The approach starts from the asymptotically optimal positioning of identical balls that covers the unit cube. Properly scaled, rotated, translated and extracted, such designs are excellent in maximin distance criterion, low in discrepancy, good in projective uniformity and thus useful in both prediction and numerical integration purposes. We provide a fast algorithm to construct such designs for any numbers of dimensions and points with R codes available online. Theoretical and numerical results are also provided

EE-optimal designs for second-order response surface models

$E$-optimal experimental designs for a second-order response surface model with $k\geq1$ predictors are investigated. If the design space is the $k$-dimensional unit cube, Galil and Kiefer [J. Statist. Plann. Inference 1 (1977a) 121-132] determined optimal designs in a restricted class of designs (defined by the multiplicity of the minimal eigenvalue) and stated their universal optimality as a conjecture. In this paper, we prove this claim and show that these designs are in fact $E$-optimal in the class of all approximate designs. Moreover, if the design space is the unit ball, $E$-optimal designs have not been found so far and we also provide a complete solution to this optimal design problem. The main difficulty in the construction of $E$-optimal designs for the second-order response surface model consists in the fact that for the multiplicity of the minimum eigenvalue of the "optimal information matrix" is larger than one (in contrast to the case $k=1$) and as a consequence the corresponding optimality criterion is not differentiable at the optimal solution. These difficulties are solved by considering nonlinear Chebyshev approximation problems, which arise from a corresponding equivalence theorem. The extremal polynomials which solve these Chebyshev problems are constructed explicitly leading to a complete solution of the corresponding $E$-optimal design problems.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/14-AOS1241 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Pooling designs with surprisingly high degree of error correction in a finite vector space

Pooling designs are standard experimental tools in many biotechnical applications. It is well-known that all famous pooling designs are constructed from mathematical structures by the "containment matrix" method. In particular, Macula's designs (resp. Ngo and Du's designs) are constructed by the containment relation of subsets (resp. subspaces) in a finite set (resp. vector space). Recently, we generalized Macula's designs and obtained a family of pooling designs with more high degree of error correction by subsets in a finite set. In this paper, as a generalization of Ngo and Du's designs, we study the corresponding problems in a finite vector space and obtain a family of pooling designs with surprisingly high degree of error correction. Our designs and Ngo and Du's designs have the same number of items and pools, respectively, but the error-tolerant property is much better than that of Ngo and Du's designs, which was given by D'yachkov et al. \cite{DF}, when the dimension of the space is large enough