FINDING AN INDEPENDENT SET IN A PLANAR GRAPH.

Abstract

A subset H of the vertices of a graph is independent if no two vertices in H are adjacent. The Erdos-Vizing problem suggests that a planar graph has an independent set of vertices that contains at least 1/4 of the vertices of the graph. An algorithm is given that produces an independent set in a planar graph that contains more than 2/9 of the vertices of the graph.