On the Pierce-Birkhoff conjecture (Q5902937)

The conjecture in question is that all continuous piecewise polynomial functions \(h\) on \(\mathbb R^ n\) (in finitely many pieces) are generated from polynomial functions by lattice operations. The author sketches a proof for the plane. It reduces to certain constructions around the common boundaries of pairs of the open sets on which \(h\) is equal to only one of the piecing polynomials. For any \(n\), common boundaries which are empty or everywhere \((n-1)\)-dimensional are taken care of; so for \(n=2\), only isolated points remain to be treated.