Polytechnic University of the Philippines

Sta. Mesa, Manila

MATHEMATICS OF GRAPHS
6.3. Planarity And Euler’s Formula
6.4 Graph Coloring

BSA 1 – 11

Cabreros, Marianne Kaye

Fulgencio, Glanelle

Navarro, John Michael

Ramos, Kathryn Joy

6.3. PLANARITY AND EULER’S FORMULA

 PLANARITY
- The condition of being planar
- From Late Latin plānārius (“relating to a plane”), derived from Latin plānus (“flat”,
“level”), ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *pleh₂- (“flat”).
- Able to be embedded in the plane with no edges intersecting.
“A complete graph with more than four nodes is never planar.”
 Planar Graphs - A graph is planar if it can be drawn in the plane with no edges
crossing.
The Utilities Problem
 Problem. There are three cottages on a plane and each needs to be connected to the
gas, water, and electricity companies.

◦ Is there a way to make all nine connections without any of the lines crossing each
other?
◦ Using a third dimension or sending connections through a company or cottage is
not allowed.

Closed Curves

A simple closed curve (or a Jordan curve) is a curve that does not cross itself and
separates the plane into two regions: the “inside” and the “outside”.

◦We will not formally define this concept.

 Plane Graphs
A plane graph is a drawing of a graph in the plane such that the edges are non-
crossing curves.

The drawing on the left is not a plane graph. However, on the right we have a
different drawing of the same graph, which is a plane graph.
An abstract graph that can be drawn as a plane graph is called a planar graph.

 EULER’S FORMULA
- Euler's formula deals with shapes called Polyhedra. A Polyhedron is a closed
solid shape which has flat faces and straight edges. An example of a polyhedron
would be a cube.
Euler’s identity is an equality found in mathematics that has
been compared to a Shakespearean sonnet and described as
"the most beautiful equation." It is a special case of a
foundational equation in complex arithmetic called Euler’s
Formula, which the late great physicist Richard Feynman
called in his lectures "our jewel" and "the most remarkable formula in mathematics."
Euler's Identity is written simply as: eiπ + 1 = 0

The five constants are:

 The number 0.
 The number 1.
 The number π, an irrational number (with unending digits) that is the ratio of the
circumference of a circle to its diameter. It is approximately 3.14159…
 The number e, also an irrational number. It is the base of natural logarithms that
arises naturally through study of compound interest and calculus. The
number e pervades math, appearing seemingly from nowhere in a vast number of
important equations. It is approximately 2.71828….
 The number i, defined as the square root of negative one: √(-1). The most
fundamental of the imaginary numbers
Euler’s Identity stems naturally from interactions of complex numbers which are
numbers composed of two pieces: a real number and an imaginary number.
Basically, it’s an equation about numbers—specifically, those elusive constants π
and e. Both are “transcendental” quantities; in decimal form, their digits unspool into
infinity. And both are ubiquitous in scientific laws. But they seem to come from different
realms: π (3.14159 …) governs the perfect symmetry and closure of the circle; it’s in
planetary orbits, the endless up and down of light waves. e (2.71828 …) is the
foundation of exponential growth, that accelerating trajectory of escape inherent to
compound interest, nuclear fission, Moore’s law. It’s used to model everything that
grows.
Now, remember the exponential function, f(x) = ex, from high school math?
Ordinarily it graphs as an upward swooping curve—the very paradigm of progress. But
put i in there, Euler showed, and eix instead traces a circle around the origin—an
endless wheel of samsara intercepting reality at –1 and +1. Add another axis for time
and it’s a helix winding into the future; viewed from the side, that helix is an oscillating
sine wave.
The rest is easy: Take that function f(x) = e ix, set x = π, and you get e iπ = –1. Rearrange
terms and you have the famous identity: eiπ + 1 = 0.
Now, maybe you’ve never thought of math equations as “beautiful,” but look at
that result: It combines the five most fundamental numbers in math—0, 1, e, i, and π—
in a relation of irreducible simplicity. 
And remember, e and π are infinitely long decimals with seemingly nothing in
common; they’re the ultimate jigsaw puzzle pieces. Yet they fit together perfectly—not
to a few places, or a hundred, or a million, but all the way to forever.
If you write that function above in a more general but still simple form as f(x) =
(zx)
e , where z = (a + bi), what you get is no longer a circle but a logarithmic spiral,
combining rotation and growth—now both at the same time! These graceful spirals are
also found everywhere in nature, from the whorls in a nautilus shell to the sweep ing
arms of galaxies. And they’re related, in turn, to the golden ratio (yet another infinite
decimal, 1.61803 …) and the Fibonacci sequence of numbers (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21,
34, 55, 89, …), which neatly describes the arrangement of leaves and petals in plants.
But the weirdest thing about Euler’s formula—given that it relies on imaginary
numbers—is that it’s so immensely useful in the real world. By translating one type of
motion into another, it lets engineers convert messy trig problems (you know, sines,
secants, and so on) into more tractable algebra—like a wormhole between separate
branches of math. 
6.4 GRAPH COLORING
Graph coloring problem is to assign colors to certain elements of a graph
subject to certain constraints. In graph theory, graph coloring is a special case of
graph labeling; it is an assignment of labels traditionally called "colors" to elements of a
graph subject to certain constraints.

Vertex coloring is the most common graph coloring problem. The problem is,
given m colors; find a way of coloring the vertices of a graph such that no two adjacent
vertices are colored using same color. The other graph coloring problems like Edge
Coloring (No vertex is incident to two edges of same color) and Face Coloring
(Geographical Map Coloring) can be transformed into vertex coloring.

An edge coloring of a graph G is a coloring of the edges of G such that adjacent

edges (or the edges bounding different regions) receive different colors. An edge
coloring containing the smallest possible number of colors for a given graph is known as
a minimum edge coloring.
Chromatic Number: The smallest number of colors needed to color a graph G is called
its chromatic number. For example, the following can be colored minimum 3 colors.

The four-color theorem states that any map in a plane can be colored using
four-colors in such a way that regions sharing a common boundary (other than a single
point) do not share the same color. This problem is sometimes also called Guthrie's
problem after Francis Guthrie, who first conjectured the theorem in 1852. The
conjecture was then communicated to de Morgan and thence into the general
community. In 1878, Cayley wrote the first paper on the conjecture.

In the mathematical area of graph theory, the

Mycielskian or Mycielski graph of an undirected graph is a larger graph formed from it
by a construction of Jan Mycielski (1955). The construction preserves the property of
being triangle-free but increases the chromatic number; by applying the construction
repeatedly to a triangle-free starting graph, Mycielski showed that there exist triangle-
free graphs with arbitrarily large chromatic number.
 The five color theorem is a result from graph theory that given a plane
separated into regions, such as a political map of the counties of a state, the regions
may be colored using no more than five colors in such a way that no two adjacent
regions receive the same color.

Graph coloring enjoys many practical applications as well as theoretical

challenges. Beside the classical types of problems, different limitations can also be set
on the graph, or on the way a color is assigned, or even on the color itself. It has even
reached popularity with the general public in the form of the popular number puzzle
Sudoku. Graph coloring is still a very active field of research.
Region Coloring
Region coloring is an assignment of colors to the regions of a planar graph such that
no two adjacent regions have the same color. Two regions are said to be adjacent if
they have a common edge.

Example:

Take a look at the following graph. The regions ‘aeb’ and ‘befc’ are adjacent, as there
is a common edge ‘be’ between those two regions.

Similarly, the other regions are also colored based on the adjacency. This graph is
colored as follows −
Example
The chromatic number of Kn is
a) n
b) n–1
c) ⌊n 2 ⌋
d) ⌈n 2 ⌉

Consider this example with K4.

In the complete graph, each vertex is adjacent to remaining (n – 1) vertices. Hence,

each vertex requires a new color. Hence the chromatic number of K n = n.

Applications of Graph Coloring

Graph coloring is one of the most important concepts in graph theory. It is used in
many real-time applications of computer science such as −

 Clustering  Networking
 Data mining  Resource allocation
 Image capturing  Processes scheduling
 Image segmentation

References:
o Coolman, R.J. (2015, June 30). Euler’s Identity: 'The Most Beautiful Equation'.
Retrieved from https://www.livescience.com/51399-eulers-identity.html
o Simmons, L. (2014, November 20). The Baffling and Beautiful Wormhole Between
Branches of Math. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/2014/11/eulers-identity/
o Planar. (2017, October 9). Retrieved from https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/planar
o Planarity. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://mathcourses.nfshost.com/archived-
courses/mat-375-001-2015-fall/lectures/lec-29-planarity.pdf
o Tutorials Point. (n.d.). Graph Theory - Coloring. Retrieved from TutorialsPoint:
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/graph_theory/graph_theory_coloring.htm
o Fiorini S. ,Wilson R., Pittman(1977). Edge- Colourings of Graphs. Retrieved from
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/EdgeColoring.html