English

A De Bruijn-Erd\H{o}s theorem in graphs?

Combinatorics 2021-10-26 v1 Metric Geometry

Abstract

A set of nn points in the Euclidean plane determines at least nn distinct lines unless these nn points are collinear. In 2006, Chen and Chv\'atal asked whether the same statement holds true in general metric spaces, where the line determined by points xx and yy is defined as the set consisting of xx, yy, and all points zz such that one of the three points x,y,zx,y,z lies between the other two. The conjecture that it does hold true remains unresolved even in the special case where the metric space arises from a connected undirected graph with unit lengths assigned to edges. We trace its curriculum vitae and point out twenty-nine related open problems plus three additional conjectures.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1812.06288,
  title  = {A De Bruijn-Erd\H{o}s theorem in graphs?},
  author = {Vašek Chvátal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.06288},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

This is a correct version of the paper published by Springer: The project manager at SPi Global who handled the production of the book on behalf of Springer neglected to make four corrections requested by the author

R2 v1 2026-06-23T06:43:26.725Z