Previous version had loose formulas and overstated what second-link
length forces. Replaced with cleaner version that:
- States the maximal-planar constraints explicitly
(E = 3V-6, F = 2V-4, sum of deg = 6V-12).
- Notes the FORCED 12 degree-5 vertices when all degrees ∈ {5,6}.
- Gives the correct second-link length formula:
L_2(v) = d + sum_{u in link(v)} (deg(u) - 5)
Earlier version had this wrong.
- Concretely: pentakis dodecahedron has L_2 = 10 around every
vertex, but its dual (Buckyball) STILL has 6-edge cyclic cuts
arising from non-second-link constructions.
So second-link length being large doesn't prevent small non-facial
cyclic cuts via other separators. The min cut size is not pinned
down by local link structure alone.
Bottom line unchanged: min non-facial cyclic cut for a min 4CT
counterexample could be 6, 7, 8, ... and Birkhoff alone doesn't
distinguish.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>
math-research
Personal mathematics research repository by Eric Bauerfeld. Papers are written in AMS-LaTeX using the amsart document class.
Papers
kempe_style_search_for_smaller_contradiction
Humans Suffice: A Novel Proof of the Four Color Theorem
An in-progress proof of the Four Color Theorem via a minimal counterexample argument. The paper builds on Kempe's 1879 strategy — establishing valid cases for vertices of degree ≤ 4, then extending the argument to the degree-5 case using properties of non-adjacent degree-5 vertices, merged subgraphs, and locked colorings.
plane_depth_labelling
Plane Depth Labelling
Early-stage paper. Title and author information set; content in progress.
Creating a New Paper
Use run.sh to scaffold a new paper from the AMS-LaTeX template:
./run.sh init_paper "Your Paper Title"
This creates a new directory (name derived from the title) containing a paper.tex pre-filled with the title and author.
Setup
The Python library code in lib/ requires SageMath. Run setup once per machine:
./run.sh setup <sage_python_path> <sage_site_packages> [system_name]
sage_python_path— path to the SageMath Python interpreter (e.g./opt/sage/local/bin/python3)sage_site_packages— path to SageMath's site-packages directorysystem_name— optional label for this machine (defaults tohostname -s); used to store per-machine env files as.env.<system_name>
On subsequent runs the paths default to whatever was saved in .env, so ./run.sh setup alone re-runs setup with the existing configuration.
Setup also compiles the plantri submodule via make.
Running Sage
To run a Sage script with plantri available on PATH:
./run.sh sage <script.py> [args...]
Or to open an interactive Sage session:
./run.sh sage
Linting
./run.sh lint
Runs pyright and pylint on lib/ using the SageMath Python interpreter.
Shell Completion
To enable tab-completion for run.sh in zsh, add this to your .zshrc:
eval "$(path/to/run.sh completion)"
Or source it once in the current shell session:
eval "$(./run.sh completion)"
Building
Papers are compiled with LaTeX. From within a paper directory:
latexmk -pdf paper.tex