Beschreibung:
<jats:title>S<jats:sc>ummary</jats:sc></jats:title><jats:p>The principal partitions of graphs and matroids have many useful applications in engineering systems analysis and information theory. The partitions are based on the nonuniform distribution of the ranks of the minors of a matroid. This paper outlines the research carried out in Japan during the last decade with motivations from various fields of engineering science.</jats:p>