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patternMinor

4-color to 3-color polynomial reduction

Submitted by: @import:stackexchange-cs··
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colorreductionpolynomial

Problem

I know a simple reduction from 3-color to 4-color. But how do you reduce 4-color to 3-color ?

I have been searching for the right way to make this reduction for a while now. I would love some pointers.

Solution

For a more general reduction, László Lovász [1] proved that

COLORABILITY reduces to 3-COLORABILITY

The COLORABILITY problem is defined as follows:

Input: A graph $G$ and a positive integer $k$.

Problem: Is $G$ $k$-colorable?

That is, the reduction given by László Lovász is applicable to any $k$ ($k \ge 4$).

However, this reduction is quite intricate. You can find an excellent explanation by Vašek Chvátal here. Please free feel to ask if you have some difficulty in understanding this reduction.

[1] Coverings and coloring of hypergraphs, Proceedings of the Fourth Southeastern Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory, and Computing, Utilitas Math., Winnipeg, Man., 1973.

Context

StackExchange Computer Science Q#37967, answer score: 5

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