Combinatorics Seminar

Line transversals in families of connected sets in the plane

Shira Zerbib

Thursday, October 7th, 2021
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Zoom ID 573 239 4086

We prove that if a family of compact connected sets in the plane has the property that every three members of it are intersected by a line, then there are three lines intersecting all the sets in the family. This answers a question of Eckhoff from 1993, who proved that, under the same condition, there are four lines intersecting all the sets. We also prove a colorful version of this result, under weakened conditions on the sets, improving the results of Holmsen from 2013. Our proofs use the topological KKM theorem. Joint with Daniel McGinnis.

Event contact: iosevich at gmail dot com