Starting from the pioneering work of D.G. Northcott and J. Sally, this volume presents new developments of Hilbert Functions in one cohesive reference. The text applies the theory to the study of certain graded algebras which are not associated to a filtration.
From the reviews:
“This book’s first aim is to gather together in one place many new developments of the theory of Hilbert functions by using a unifying approach of filtrations of submodules. In this way, the book not only extends many well-known results ... but it also gives self-contained and easier proofs of even classical results. ... This is a short but very nice book. It is useful for graduate students and researchers who are interested in the theory of Hilbert functions.” (Lê Tuấn Hoa, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2012 b)
“The authors introduce and discuss the notion of a good q-filtration of a module over a local ring. ... The authors give several upper bounds for the first two Hilbert coefficients of the Hilbert polynomial of a filtration ... . This is an interesting and well written lecture note.” (Siamak Yassemi, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1201, 2011)