Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics Commons^™

An Exploration Of The Chromatic Polynomial, Amanda Aydelotte

Mathematics Undergraduate Theses

In 1912, George Birkhoff was studying the Four Color Problem, and in doing so introduced the concept of the chromatic polynomial. While this did not end up directly contributing to proving that every map could be colored with four colors such that no region shares a border with another region of the same color, the chromatic polynomial has been found to have some very interesting properties. In this paper, it will be our goal to examine some of these properties and use them to determine information about their corresponding graphs.