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New Zealand Mathematics Colloquium 2001
December 3-6, 2001
Massey University
Palmerston North, New Zealand

Organizers
Dr I. Boglaev, Dr M. Carter, Dr J. Hudson, Dr C. Little (convenor), Ass. Prof R. McLachlan, Ass. Prof C. Lai

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Zeros of Chromatic Polynomials and Broken Wheels
by
Shona Yu
Institute of Fundamental Sciences, Massey University
Coauthors: Dr. Kee Teo (Massey University)

An introduction to chromatic polynomials is given. Genert observed that when the chromatic roots of certain families of graphs are plotted in the complex plane they show a remarkable non-random pattern. Some properties of a family of graphs called ``broken wheels'' are stated and it is conjectured that all real roots of the broken wheel of order n, where n is at least 5 and odd, with k consecutive remaining spokes, are integers.

Date received: October 14, 2001


Copyright © 2001 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cahf-29.