A small basis for four‐line configurations in steiner triple systems. Dedicated to the memory of gemma holly griggs

Formulae for the numbers of two, three, and four-line configurations in a Steiner triple system of order v, STS(v), are given. While the formulae for two and three-line configurations depend only on v, the same is true for only 5 of the 16 four-line configurations. For the other 11 and fixed v, the number of occurrences of any one of them, in particular the Pasch configuration, determines the number of occurrences of all the others. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.