Minors of 3-connected matroids (Q1079571)

If M is a 3-connected nonbinary matroid then every pair of elements of M are in a \(U^ 2_ 4\) minor. This earlier result of the author is now derived from the following general result: If we wish to test whether \(U^ 2_ 4\) (or any other 3-connected matroid N) has the property described above, it is only necessary to test that it works for those matroids M with 5 (or more generally, \(| E(N)| +1)\) elements.