“I wisely started with a map…”
J. R. R. Tolkien
Our family likes maps. In fact Melissa is extremely fond of them, her copy of the Times World Atlas never far from hand. Maps are fascinating, as is the fact that you only ever need five colours to represent the countries, no matter the size, shape, number, or arrangement of them. This is known as the Five colour theorem. Of course you can never prove this by trial and error, no matter how many maps you draw. You need mathematics. The Five colour theorem was thought to be proved by implication of the Four colour theorem, in a paper published by Percy John Heywood in 1890. Sadly, just after his success, Heywood recognised a flaw in the original proof of Four colour theorem published by Alfred Kempe 11 years previously. A correct proof of the Four colour theorem, and but implication the Five colour theorem, actually took until 1976. A combination of planar graphing and proof by contradiction did the trick. The more frightening implication of this is that a person really only need buy five colours pencils. #toolatenow #letsmakelemonade
Pen Paint and Scalpel 