Matroids with many common bases. (Q1406555)

The notion of ``vertical \(k\)-connectivity'' of matroids, due to Oxley, is utilized to formulate a strengthened version of a previous theorem of the author's. This new statement is proven: If the symmetric difference of the collections of bases of two matroids has at most \(k\) elements, then, except in certain simply-described cases, it is possible to relax circuit-hyperplanes of the two matroids, at most \(k\) in total, to obtain a common matroid.