FEDERAL STATE- FUNDED EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION OF HIGHER

PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

FINANCIAL UNIVERSITY
UNDER THE GOVERNMENT OF RUSSIA FEDERATION
(Financial University)

Chair of Mathematics-I
Discrete Math
ABSTRACT
on

COLORING MAPS AND GRAPH.

Written by: Huynh Phuong An

Ngo Viet Nga
/. Group1-4k
International Finance Faculty
Tutor: Olga Orel
Associate Professor

Moscow 2015

I.

INTRODUCTION

Problems related to the coloring of maps of regions, such as maps of parts of the world,
have generated many results in graph theory. When a map is colored, two regions with a
common border are customarily assigned different colors. One way to ensure that two adjacent
regions never have the same color is to use a different color for each region. However, this is
inefficient, and on maps with many regions it would be hard to distinguish similar colors. Instead,
a small number of colors should be used whenever possible. Consider the problem of determining
the least number of colors that can be used to color a map so that adjacent regions never have the
same color. For instance, for the map shown on the left in Figure 1, four colors suffice, but three
colors are not enough. In the map on the right in Figure 1, three colors are sufficient (but two are
not).

Figure 1 Map Coloring Example

Each map in the plane can be represented by a graph. To set up this correspondence, each
region of the map is represented by a vertex. Edges connect two vertices if the regions
represented by these vertices have a common border. Two regions that touch at only one point are
not considered adjacent. The resulting graph is called the dual graph of the map. By the way in
which dual graphs of maps are constructed, it is clear that any map in the plane has a planar dual
graph. Figure 2 displays the dual graphs that correspond to the maps shown in Figure 1.

Figure 2 Dual graphs corresponding to Figure 1

The problem of coloring the regions of a map is equivalent to the problem of coloring the
vertices of the dual graph so that no two adjacent vertices in this graph have the same color.

This abstract aims to produce a quick introduction into graph coloring one of the more
important aspect of graph theory. Aside from further explaining the map coloring problem, the
paper attempts to cover also the development of graph coloring through math history, the most
basic definitions of the subjects and several important theorems as well as their proofs and last
but not least, a few example problems solved by applying graph coloring principle.
II.
GRAPH COLORING
1. History of Graph coloring:
The first results about graph coloring deal almost exclusively with planar graphs in the
form of the coloring of maps. While trying to color a map of the counties of England, Francis
Guthrie postulated the four color conjecture, noting that four colors were sufficient to color the
map so that no regions sharing a common border received the same color. Guthries brother
passed on the question to his mathematics teacher Augustus de Morgan at University College,
who mentioned it in a letter to William Hamilton in 1852. Arthur Cayley raised the problem at a
meeting of the London Mathematical Society in 1879. The same year, Alfred Kempe published a
paper that claimed to establish the result, and for a decade the four color problem was considered
solved.
In 1890, Heawood pointed out that Kempes argument was wrong. However, in that paper
he proved the five color theorem, saying that every planar map can be colored with no more than
five colors, using ideas of Kempe. In the following century, a vast amount of work and theories
were developed to reduce the number of colors to four, until the four color theorem was finally
proved in 1976 by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken.
In 1912, George David Birkhoff introduced the chromatic polynomial to study the
coloring problems, which was generalised to the Tutte polynomial by Tutte, important structures
in algebraic graph theory. Kempe had already drawn attention to the general, non-planar case in
1879,[3] and many results on generalisations of planar graph coloring to surfaces of higher order
followed in the early 20th century.
In 1960, Claude Berge formulated another conjecture about graph coloring, the strong
perfect graph conjecture, originally motivated by an information-theoretic concept called the
zero-error capacity of a graph introduced by Shannon. The conjecture remained unresolved for 40
years, until it was established as the celebrated strong perfect graph theorem by Chudnovsky,
Robertson, Seymour, and Thomas in 2002.
Graph coloring has been studied as an algorithmic problem since the early 1970s: the
chromatic number problem is one of Karps 21 NP-complete problems from 1972, and at
approximately the same time various exponential-time algorithms were developed based on
backtracking and on the deletion-contraction recurrence of Zykov (1949). One of the major
applications of graph coloring, register allocation in compilers, was introduced in 1981.
2. Graph coloring classification:
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.
The most common types of graph colorings are edge coloring and vertex coloring.
2

In its simplest form, it is a way of coloring the vertices of a graph such that no two
adjacent vertices share the same color; this is called a vertex coloring.

Figure 3 Examples of Vertex Coloring

Similarly, an edge coloring assigns a color to each edge so that no two adjacent edges
share the same color.
A face coloring of a planar graph assigns a color to each face or region so that no two

Figure 4 Examples of Edge Coloring

faces that share a boundary have the same color.

3. Vertex coloring

Figure 5 Face coloring (planar graph). In fact, a face coloring

problem could easily be translate into a vertex coloring one like
this.

As vertex coloring is the starting point of the subject, and other coloring problems can be
transformed into a vertex version, plus the fact that our abstract mainly deals with basic graph
coloring and the utilization of vertex coloring in map coloring problems, the main concern would
be with the theory of vertex coloring.
EXAMPLE 1-1
Imagine that you are a wedding planner organizing the rehearsal dinner before a big
wedding. There are a total of 16 people attending the rehearsal dinner: A, B, C, H are relatives of
the bride and groom; I, J, K, P are members of the wedding, you are told that some of these
people have serious issues:
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
A
B
C
D
3

E
F
G
H
Table 1 Wedding seating problem

Cant stand being seated

w/.
To make the rehearsal dinner go smoothly you are instructed to find a way to seat these
people so that people that dont get along must be seated at different tables. (I through P get along
with everyone, so they are not a concern.) How are you going to set up the seating arrangements
with so many incompatibility issues to worry about? What is the minimum number of tables you
will need? You can answer both of these questions using a little graph theory.
We will start by creating the incompatibility graph shown in Fig. 6(a). In this graph the
vertices represent the individuals, and two vertices are connected by an edge if the corresponding
individuals dont get along (and therefore, should not be seated at the same table). To make
seating assignments we assign colors to the vertices of the graph, with each color representing a
table. Since we dont want two incompatible individuals seated at the same table, we dont want
to color two vertices that are connected by an edge with the same color. We will refer to any
coloring that satisfies this rule as a legal coloring of the graph.

Figure 4 Wedding Table Setting Solution using graph coloring

Figure 6(b) shows a legal coloring of the vertices of the graph in Fig. 6(a) that uses four
different colors. This coloring tells us how to seat this obnoxious group using four tables. Can we
do better (i.e. use less than four tables)? Figure 6(c) shows a legal coloring of the vertices of the
graph that uses just three colors.
Could we possibly come up with a legal coloring of the vertices of the graph that uses just
two colors? No. The reason is clear if we look at A, F, and G (or any other set of three vertices
that form a triangle). Since each is adjacent to the other two, A, F, and G will have to be colored
with different colors. The conclusion to our analysis is:

the minimum number of tables needed to sit the wedding party is three
the seating assignment should put A, B, and E in one table (red), C and F in a second table (blue),
and D, G, and H in the third table (green). The remaining members of the wedding party can be
arbitrarily assigned to fill up the remaining seats at the three tables.
4

DEFINITION 1
A k-coloring of a graph G
is a coloring of the
vertices of G using k
colors and satisfying the
requirement
DEFINITIONthat
2 adjacent
vertices are colored with
The
chromatic
different
colors. number
of a graph G is the
smallest number k for
which a k-coloring of the
vertices of G is possible.
We will use the notation
(G )
to denote the
chromatic number of G.

Using the above notation, for the graph G in Fig. 6(a) we have
(G ) 3
. This follows from the observation that a 3-coloring of
G is possible, as shown in Fig. 6(c), but a 2-coloring of G is not.
EXAMPLE 1-2: Coloring Complete Graphs

If

is a complete graph, we have

(G )

Proof: In this graph every vertex is adjacent to every other

vertex, so no two vertices can have the same color. The only
possible way to color is to use a different color for each vertex.

EXAMPLE 1-3: The chromatic number of an n-sided polygon is:

2 if n is even

3 if n is odd

4. The greedy algorithm for graph coloring

Like some of the other graph problems such as Euler circuit problems, traveling salesman
problems, shortest network problems, and scheduling problems etc., graph coloring can be
thought of as an optimization problem:

How can we color a graph using the fewest possible number of colors? We will call such a
coloring an optimal coloring of the graph, and the general problem of finding optimal colorings
is known as the coloring problem.
DEFINITION 3
An optimal coloring of a graph G is a coloring of the vertices of G using the fewest possible
number of colors. To put it in slightly more formal terminology, an optimal coloring of G is a
(G ) coloring
of G.
Given an arbitrary graph G, how do we find an optimal coloring of G? No efficient
general algorithm is known for finding optimal colorings of graphs. For small graphs we can
use trial and error, and for some families of graphs optimal coloring is reasonably easy (for
example complete graphs, circuits, etc.) but those are just special cases. In general, the best we
can do is to use approximate algorithms that hopefully get us close to an optimal coloring.
Greedy Algorithm for Graph Coloring
Step 1. Assign the first color
Step 2. Vertex

v2

(c1 )

to the first vertex

is assigned color

Steps 3, 4,, n. Vertex

c1

v1

if it is not adjacent to

v1

otherwise it gets assigned color

c2

vi

is assigned the first possible color in the priority list of colors (i.e. the
vi
first color that has not been assigned to one of the already colored neighbors of ).
The greedy algorithm can also be used to produce upper bounds on the chromatic number
of the graph. The best known of these upper bounds is given by the following fact, known as
Brooks Theorem
THEOREM 1 (Brooks
Theorem)
d1 d 2 ... d n

Let
be
the degrees of the vertices
of the graph G listed in
decreasing order. Then
(G ) d1 1

Brooks Theorem essentially says that the chromatic

number of a graph cannot be more than the largest degree in the
graph plus one. To see why this is true, think about the worst case
scenario we can run into when we are coloring a vertex using the
greedy algorithm: the vertex is adjacent to many other vertices all
of which have been colored with different colors. Since the
largest number of adjacent vertices a vertex can have is the worst
thing that could happen is that the first colors have been used and
we would need one more to color our vertex

It turns out that for connected graphs, the only two cases where we actually have to use
the maximum colors to color the graph are when the graph is the complete graph (all vertices
6

have degree the chromatic number is n), or the circuit where n is odd (all vertices have degree 2,
the chromatic number is 3). If we rule these two cases out, we no longer need the in Brooks
Theorem.
We will call this the strong version of Brooks Theorem.
THEOREM 2 (Brooks
Theorem
(Strong
Version))
d1 d 2 ... d n

Let
be the
degrees of the vertices of
a connected graph G
listed in decreasing order.
Cn
If G is not
(n odd) or
Kn
(G ) d1
then

III.

MAP COLORING

Map drawing and coloring is an ancient art, but the

connection between map coloring and mathematics originated in
1852 when a University of London student by the name of
Francis Guthrie mentioned to his mathematics professor (the
well-known mathematician Augustus De Morgan) that he noticed
that every map could be colored with four colors (where districts
with a common border had to be colored with different colors).

Guthries notion that any map could be colored with just

four colors, sounded so simple that everyone assumed it could be
easily proved mathematically. After 100 years and many failed
attempts at a proof, the Four-Color Conjecture, as the problem was famously known, was finally
solved in 1976 by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken of the University of Illinois. Guthrie was
right: Every map can be colored with four colors or less. The solution to this simple question took
up 500 pages and about 1000 hours of computer time.
Note that map can be considered as a planar graph, so the map coloring problem is the
same as asking for the minimum number of colors required to color a planar map so that no two
adjacent regions are assigned the same color. The answer is provided by this one of the most
famous theorems in mathematics.
THEOREM 2 (THE FOUR COLOR THEOREM)
The chromatic number of a planar graph is no greater than four.

Any map coloring problem can be converted into a graph coloring problem by first
finding the dual graph of the map. In the dual graph, each vertex represents a country
(remember that this is a metaphor for the political units used in the map), and two vertices are
connected by an edge if the corresponding states have a common border. If the common border
happens to be just a point then we do not connect the vertices. The problem of coloring the map
using the fewest number of colors now becomes simply the problem of finding an optimal
coloring of the vertices of the dual graph.
EXAMPLE 2-1 Map Coloring with Dual Graphs

Picture 1 The World map in 4 colors

Figure 5 Map coloring with dual graphs

Figure 7 (a) shows a small map with six states, and Fig. 7 (b) shows its dual graph. Figure
7 (c) shows an optimal 3-coloring of the dual graph. We know that the 3-coloring is optimal
because the graph has triangles, and thus cannot be colored with 2 colors. The corresponding
optimal coloring of the map is shown in Fig. 7(d).