Block Design

In combinatorial mathematics, a block design is a set together with a family of subsets (repeated subsets are allowed at times) whose members are chosen to satisfy some set of properties that are deemed useful for a particular application. These applications come from many areas, including experimental design, finite geometry, software testing, cryptography, and algebraic geometry. Many variations have been examined, but the most intensely studied are the balanced incomplete block designs (BIBDs or 2-designs) which historically were related to statistical issues in the design of experiments.

A block design in which all the blocks have the same size is called uniform. The designs discussed in this article are all uniform. Pairwise balanced designs (PBDs) are examples of block designs that are not necessarily uniform.

Read more about Block Design:  Definition of A BIBD (or 2-design), Symmetric BIBDs, Resolvable 2-designs, Generalization: t-designs, Steiner Systems, Partially Balanced Designs (PBIBDs), Applications

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    When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.
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    Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)