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Introduction to Vassiliev Knot Invariants
This book is a detailed introduction to the theory of finite type (Vassiliev)
knot invariants, with a stress on its combinatorial aspects. It is intended to
serve both as a textbook for readers with no or little background in this area,
and as a guide to some of the more advanced material. Our aim is to lead the
reader to understanding by means of pictures and calculations, and for this
reason we often prefer to convey the idea of the proof on an instructive
example rather than give a complete argument. While we have made an effort to
make the text reasonably self-contained, an advanced reader is sometimes
referred to the original papers for the technical details of the proofs.
Version 3: some typos and inaccuracies are corrected.Comment: 512 pages, thousands picture