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- Four colors are necessary if and only if four regions are all bordering one another. This follows
for any number of colors.
- Whenever four regions all share borders, one will inevitably be trapped inside the others. As a
result, a fifth one could not possibly touch all of them.
- Trying to have five regions all bordering one another is the same as trying to make five points all
connect to each-other with non-overlapping lines. (You could just “thicken” the points and lines
into the shapes of the regions)
The Proof
*I’ve included drawings to help visualization, but keep in mind that the specific arrangement of
the points or the lines connecting them need not matter*
Let’s just look at the points and lines that connect A, B, C, and D for now.
- Thus, we have split the region ABCD into two small regions (ABC and ADC)
- Since all the points are connected, there exists a line that connects B and D
- This line must travel outside ABCD since it must travel outside regions ABC and ADC
- Thus we have created a larger shape that contains ABC and ADC
- This larger shape is either ABD or BCD, we will suppose it is ABD, similar arguments would follow
otherwise.
- ABD contains ABCD< therefore point C is inside region ABD (this would not be the case if C were
on the perimeter, but C cannot be on the perimeter since these lines do not overlap)
- We now have a big region ABD comprised of three smaller ones ABC, BCD, and ADC
- If point E is in region ABC, it can’t reach point D without crossing a line. (Similar arguments for
regions ABD and ADC for points C and B respectively)
- If point E is outside of the large region ABD, it can’t reach point C without crossing a line.
- Therefore, there cannot exist a point E that connects to all of the other points
- Then there cannot be 5 regions touching each other all at once and there does not exist some
map that needs five colors.
Case 2: The line that connects A to C travels outside the region ABCD
- Thus we have created a larger region that contains ABCD
- This larger shape is either ACD or ABD, we will suppose it is ACD. Similar arguments would
follow otherwise.
- We now have a large region (ACD) comprised of two small ones (ABC and ABCD)
- Since all the points are connected, there exists a line that connect B and D
- Point B is contained, therefore the line must travel through region ABCD to get to D
- We now have a big region (ACD) comprised of three smaller ones (ABC, ABD, BCD).
- If point E is in region ABC, it can’t reach point D without crossing a line. (Similar arguments
follow for regions ABD and BCD for points C and A respectively)
- If point E is outside of the large region ACD, it can’t reach point B without crossing a line
- Therefore, there cannot exist a point E that connects to all of the other points
- Then there cannot be 5 regions touching each other all at once and there does not exist some
map that needs five colors.