| This thesis addresses two closely related problems about ideals of powers of linear forms.;In the first chapter, we analyze a problem from spline theory, namely to compute the dimension of the vector space of trivariate splines on a special class of tetrahedral complexes, using ideals of powers of linear forms. By Macaulay's inverse system, this class of ideals is closely related to ideals of fat points.;In the second chapter, we approach a conjecture of Postnikov and Shapiro concerning the minimal free resolutions of a class of ideals of powers of linear forms in n variables which are constructed from complete graphs on n + 1 vertices. This statement was also conjectured by Schenck in the special case of n = 3. We provide two different approaches to his conjecture. We prove the conjecture of Postnikov and Shapiro under the additional condition that certain modules are free. |
