scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1182906

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The authors try to give a short introduction to the theory of convex polytopes. They concentrate on the following two main topics: (i) combinatorial properties of faces, vertices, edges, \dots, facets of polytopes with special treatments of the classes of ``low-dimensional polytopes and ``polytopes with few vertices; (ii) geometric properties such as volume, surface area, and mixed volumes. The article is divided into following sections. 1. Combinatorial structure (\(d\)-polytope is introduced here as a convex hull of a finite set of points in \(\mathbb R^d\) and as a bounded solution set of a finite system of linear inequalities; the simplex, \(d\)-cube, and cross-polytope in \(\mathbb R^d\) are defined). 1.1. Faces (the theorem on face lattices of polytopes is given here). 1.2. Polarity . 1.3. Basis constructions. 1.4. More examples (zonotopes, cyclic polytopes, neighborly polytopes, and \((0,1)\)-polytopes are introduced here). 1.5. Three-dimensional polytopes and planar graphs (Steinitz's theorem is formulated). 1.6. Four-dimensional polytopes and Schlegel diagrams (Richter-Gerbert's universality theorem for 4-polytopes is formulated). 1.7. Polytopes with few vertices -- Gale diagrams. 2. Metric properties. 2.1. Volume and surface area. 2.2. Mixed volumes (Schneider's summation formula is given as well as McMullen's formula for the volume of a special zonotope). 2.3. Quermassintegrals and intrinsic volumes. 3. Sources and related material (this section contains 35 references to related books and articles and gives a short description of some of them). Each section starts with a glossary containing all necessary definitions, presents (without proofs) basic theorems and formulas related to the topic under discussion, gives basic examples, and (sometimes) contains a list of open problems. The style of exposition is clear and elementary. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0890.52001].




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