Four Colour Theorem

A Presentation By :Priya Sharma

IX B

PUZZLE- 1

Hello! I am Arpita.
I am in a big
trouble. Could you
help me?

Arpita wants to create a house but the problem is

that she is told to paint each room in a manner
such that no 2 adjacent room have same colour.
Remember:- She has limited colours of paint, so
use the minimum no. of colour.

THE HOUSE

Lets try with 1 colour

Observation
We can see that it is not possible to
do so in 1 colour. Using 1 colur made
every room in the same colour which
does not satisfy the condition given.
Now we will have to try with 2
colours.

Lets try with 2 colours

observation
We can see that even by using 2
colours rooms like hall- corridor,
bedroom- corridor, verandah- hall,
etc. are of same colour which does
not satisfy our condition.
Now we will have to try with 3
colours.

Lets try with 3 colours

observation
We can see that even after using 3
colours, rooms like verandahcorridor and verandah- washroom
are of same colour which does not
satisfy our condition.
Now we have to add another colour
to see if it works.

Lets try with 4 colours

observation
We can see that using 4 colours,
there are no rooms left with same
colour and arpita can now use only 4
colours to paint the house.

Oh! Thank you so much.

You helped me a lot! Now I
can paint the house
according to the owners
choice and can also use
less colours.

PUZZLE- 2

OK! STUDENTS,
YOUR TODAYS H.W.
IS AS FOLLOWS.

h. w. given by teacher
The following drawings must be
coloured such that no 2 adjacent
areas must have same colour.

Figure not to scale

Amits method
Amit thinks that 3 colours are
enough to solve the question. He was
able to do the first part but was stuck
in the second.

Teachers method
It is not necessary that every figure
will require only 3 colours. The 4
colour theorem states that, given any
separation of a plane intocontiguous
regions, producing a figure called
amap, no more than four colours are
required to colour the regions of the
map so that no two adjacent regions
have the same colour.

PUZZLE- 3

Oh no! I have to go for the world

tour next morning but Im
confused. I have 4 weeks to visit
every country and I dont want
to visit any 2 adjacent countries
in the same week. Will you
please help me out?

World map

Lets use the four colour theorem to

solve this

First week
Second week
Third week
Fourth week

You are so intelligent. You discovered a new

theorem.

is it really true
Is this theorem really discovered by
us, or is already discovered?
If already discovered, who discovered
it? How did he proved it?

story of four colour theorem

The theorem was first discovered by Francis
Guthrie, when he was trying to colour the
map of counties of England. He noticed that
only four different colours were needed. At
the time, Guthrie's brother, Frederick, was a
student ofAugustus De Morgan(the former
advisor of Francis) atUniversity College
London. Francis inquired with Frederick
regarding it, who then took it to De Morgan
(Francis Guthrie graduated later in 1852,
and later became a professor of
mathematics in South Africa).

story of four colour theorem

One alleged proof was given byAlfred Kempein
1879, which was widely acclaimed;[3]another
was given byPeter Guthrie Taitin 1880. It was
not until 1890 that Kempe's proof was shown
incorrect byPercy Heawood, and in 1891 Tait's
proof was shown incorrect byJulius Petersen
each false proof stood unchallenged for 11
years (Thomas 1998, p.848).
In 1890, in addition to exposing the flaw in
Kempe's proof, Heawood proved thefive color
theorem(Heawood 1890) and generalized the
four color conjecture to surfaces of arbitrary
genussee below.

story of four colour theorem

Tait, in 1880, showed that the four
color theorem is equivalent to the
statement that a certain type of
graph (called asnarkin modern
terminology) must be non-planar.[8]
In 1943,Hugo Hadwigerformulated
theHadwiger conjecture(Hadwiger
1943), a far-reaching generalization
of the four-color problem that still
remains unsolved.

story of four colour theorem

Since the proving of the theorem, efficient
algorithms have been found for 4-coloring
maps requiring onlyO(n2) time, wherenis the
number of vertices. In 1996,Neil
Robertson,Daniel P. Sanders,Paul Seymour,
andRobin Thomascreated aquadratictimealgorithm, improving on aquartic-time
algorithm based on Appel and Hakens proof
(Thomas 1995;Robertson et al. 1996). This new
proof is similar to Appel and Haken's but more
efficient because it reduces the complexity of
the problem and requires checking only 633
reducible configurations.

HOW IS THE PROOF INTERESTING

This is a theorem whose proof kept
changing and every proof had some
controversy or objection.
A theorem which started from the 19 th
century and still mathematicians are
working to improve the proof.
Proofs changed over time to time but each
proof is correct inspite of objections arised.
There is no one person who discovered it.
Mathematicians gave proof over past 2
centuries.

PUZZLE- 4

Puzzle based on four colour theorem

What if mars is divided into areas
such that each area belongs to a
country and they too are coloured in
the colour of their country and by the
same rule? How many colours are
required now?

mars
Divide into 196 parts each belonging to a country and
colour them to the colour of the country they belong to.
Remember the rule also. How many colours are required
now.

2-d figure of mars divided according

to rule.

Observation.
Since the figure is a graph, the four
colour theorem will apply here. Using
atlas each country has been given an
area from the figure seen earlier. Still
only four colours were required. This
proves that whatever the no. of
partitions or area be, four colour
theorem will apply for every graph
irrespective of size.

Thank You