Counting Problems and Clones of Functions

Abstract

Counting solutions of various combinatorial problems is a well established and intensively studied area of theoretical computer science. Its applications range from networking to statistical physics. The central question in this area is the complexity of and algorithms for problems of this type. It turns out that in many important cases these questions can be answered with aid of certain clones of functions of multi-valued logic. We show the connection between the two areas and survey recent advances in this research direction.