Crossing number (graph theory)In graph theory, the crossing number cr(G) of a graph G is the lowest number of edge crossings of a plane drawing of the graph G. For instance, a graph is planar if and only if its crossing number is zero. Determining the crossing number continues to be of great importance in graph drawing, as user studies have shown that drawing graphs with few crossings makes it easier for people to understand the drawing.
Complete graphIn the mathematical field of graph theory, a complete graph is a simple undirected graph in which every pair of distinct vertices is connected by a unique edge. A complete digraph is a directed graph in which every pair of distinct vertices is connected by a pair of unique edges (one in each direction). Graph theory itself is typically dated as beginning with Leonhard Euler's 1736 work on the Seven Bridges of Königsberg. However, drawings of complete graphs, with their vertices placed on the points of a regular polygon, had already appeared in the 13th century, in the work of Ramon Llull.
Planar graphIn graph theory, a planar graph is a graph that can be embedded in the plane, i.e., it can be drawn on the plane in such a way that its edges intersect only at their endpoints. In other words, it can be drawn in such a way that no edges cross each other. Such a drawing is called a plane graph or planar embedding of the graph. A plane graph can be defined as a planar graph with a mapping from every node to a point on a plane, and from every edge to a plane curve on that plane, such that the extreme points of each curve are the points mapped from its end nodes, and all curves are disjoint except on their extreme points.
Outerplanar graphIn graph theory, an outerplanar graph is a graph that has a planar drawing for which all vertices belong to the outer face of the drawing. Outerplanar graphs may be characterized (analogously to Wagner's theorem for planar graphs) by the two forbidden minors K4 and K2,3, or by their Colin de Verdière graph invariants. They have Hamiltonian cycles if and only if they are biconnected, in which case the outer face forms the unique Hamiltonian cycle. Every outerplanar graph is 3-colorable, and has degeneracy and treewidth at most 2.
Planarity testingIn graph theory, the planarity testing problem is the algorithmic problem of testing whether a given graph is a planar graph (that is, whether it can be drawn in the plane without edge intersections). This is a well-studied problem in computer science for which many practical algorithms have emerged, many taking advantage of novel data structures. Most of these methods operate in O(n) time (linear time), where n is the number of edges (or vertices) in the graph, which is asymptotically optimal.
Book embeddingIn graph theory, a book embedding is a generalization of planar embedding of a graph to embeddings in a book, a collection of half-planes all having the same line as their boundary. Usually, the vertices of the graph are required to lie on this boundary line, called the spine, and the edges are required to stay within a single half-plane. The book thickness of a graph is the smallest possible number of half-planes for any book embedding of the graph. Book thickness is also called pagenumber, stacknumber or fixed outerthickness.
Dual graphIn the mathematical discipline of graph theory, the dual graph of a planar graph G is a graph that has a vertex for each face of G. The dual graph has an edge for each pair of faces in G that are separated from each other by an edge, and a self-loop when the same face appears on both sides of an edge. Thus, each edge e of G has a corresponding dual edge, whose endpoints are the dual vertices corresponding to the faces on either side of e.
Graph drawingGraph drawing is an area of mathematics and computer science combining methods from geometric graph theory and information visualization to derive two-dimensional depictions of graphs arising from applications such as social network analysis, cartography, linguistics, and bioinformatics. A drawing of a graph or network diagram is a pictorial representation of the vertices and edges of a graph. This drawing should not be confused with the graph itself: very different layouts can correspond to the same graph.
Grötzsch's theoremIn the mathematical field of graph theory, Grötzsch's theorem is the statement that every triangle-free planar graph can be colored with only three colors. According to the four-color theorem, every graph that can be drawn in the plane without edge crossings can have its vertices colored using at most four different colors, so that the two endpoints of every edge have different colors, but according to Grötzsch's theorem only three colors are needed for planar graphs that do not contain three mutually adjacent vertices.
Crossing number (knot theory)In the mathematical area of knot theory, the crossing number of a knot is the smallest number of crossings of any diagram of the knot. It is a knot invariant. By way of example, the unknot has crossing number zero, the trefoil knot three and the figure-eight knot four. There are no other knots with a crossing number this low, and just two knots have crossing number five, but the number of knots with a particular crossing number increases rapidly as the crossing number increases.
