We give a graph theoretic interpretation of $r$-Lah numbers, namely, we show that the $r$-Lah number ${⌊\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{n}{k}⌋}_r$ counting the number of $r$-partitions of an $(n+r)$-element set into $k+r$ ordered blocks is just equal to the number of matchings consisting of $n-k$ edges in the complete bipartite graph with partite sets of cardinality $n$ and $n+2r-1$ ($0\le k\le n$, $r\ge 1$). We present five independent proofs including a direct, bijective one. Finally, we close our work with a similar result for $r$-Stirling numbers of the second kind.

We introduce the notion of a matroid $M$ over a commutative ring $R$, assigning to every subset of the ground set an $R$-module according to some axioms. When $R$ is a field, we recover matroids. When $R=\mathbb{Z}$, and when $R$ is a DVR, we get (structures which contain all the data of) quasi-arithmetic matroids, and valuated matroids, i.e. tropical linear spaces, respectively. More generally, whenever $R$ is a Dedekind domain, we extend all the usual properties and operations holding for matroids (e.g., duality), and...