Computing the period of an Ehrhart quasi-polynomial.
We present a combinatorial mechanism for counting certain objects associated to a variety over a finite field. The basic example is that of counting conjugacy classes of the general linear group. We discuss how the method applies to counting these and also to counting unipotent matrices and pairs of commuting matrices.[Proceedings of the Primeras Jornadas de Teoría de Números (Vilanova i la Geltrú (Barcelona), 30 June - 2 July 2005)].
Previous work on counting maximal independent sets for paths and certain 2-dimensional grids is extended in two directions: 3-dimensional grid graphs are included and, for some/any ℓ ∈ N, maximal distance-ℓ independent (or simply: maximal ℓ-independent) sets are counted for some grids. The transfer matrix method has been adapted and successfully applied