Outerplanar graph drawings with few slopes (Q2444313)

A straight-line drawing of a graph \(G\) is a mapping of the vertices of \(G\) into distinct points of the plane and of the edges of \(G\) into straight-line segments connecting the points representing their end-vertices and passing through no other points representing vertices. The slope of an edge in a straight-line drawing is the family of all straight lines parallel to this edge. The slope number of a graph \(G\) is the smallest number \(s\) such that there is a straight-line drawing of \(G\) using \(s\) slopes. The main result of the paper is that for \(\Delta \leq 4\) every outerplanar graph with maximum degree at most \(\Delta\) has outerplanar slope number at most \(\Delta - 1\). The bound is tight because there is an outerplanar graph with maximum degree that requires this slope number.