Graph Theory: Problem set 4 Yannik Messerli 181157

Problem 4
First we will see what does it mean with a example. Let’s take three vertices. We can see that if the graph
G related is connect, we have 2 or three edges in the graph. When we have two edges, the graph is only a
path and it’s easy to see that we can remove the last vertice (or the first). When we have three edges, our
graph consist of a loop. Again, we can choose to remove the vertice we want since every vertices is
connected to each other. We can see it on figure 1.

Figure 1: We can remove in any case a vertice (in red) without deconnecting the graph

More generally, this example shows us that whatever the graph is, we can remove a vertice at the end of a
path if this vertice have a degree of one, or we can remove a vertice in cycle if the graph is complete. To
prove it we will use a induction proof. Let’s take a graph G = {V, E}. We’ll make our induction on the
number of vertices in G. We already have shown it works for |V | = 3.

Let’s assume it is working for |V | = n, so that in a connected graph G of n vertices we can remove a
vertice, let’s call it vertice n, without deconnecting our graph G. Now we have to show that it is working
with one more vertice, call it n + 1, and call the new graph G0 .
From our previous observations, we can distinguish two cases. First, if the vertice is only connected to
vertice n, it has a degree one and we can easily that we can remove it without deconnecting the graph G0
that is in fact our connected graph G (figure 2).

n+1

Figure 2: First case, we can remove point n + 1 without deconnecting G0

n+1

Figure 3: Seconde case: we can deconnect point n

In the second case, n + 1 is connected to an arbitrary number of other vertices (but at least one) and can be
connected to n or not. In this case, we can remove the point n as it does not deconnect our graph G; while
we have added only edges to our point n + 1, it also won’t deconnect G0 . We can see it on the figure 3
This conclude our induction step and prove that we can always remove a vertice in any connected graph
without deconnecting it.

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