A sharp edge bound on the interval number of a graph
József Balogh, András Pluhár · Journal of Graph Theory · 1999
The interval number of a graph G, denoted by i(G), is the least natural number t such that G is the intersection graph of sets, each of which is the union of at most t intervals. Here we settle a conjecture of Griggs and West about bounding i(G) in terms of e, that is, the number of edges in G. Namely, it is shown that i(G) ≤ + 1. It is also observed that the edge bound induces i(G) ≤ , where γ(G) is the genus of G. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Graph Theory 32: 153–159, 1999