There are several theorems known as the "sandwich theorem."
In calculus, the squeeze theorem is also sometimes known as the sandwich theorem.
In graph theory, the sandwich theorem states that the Lovász number
of a graph
satisfies
(1)
|
where
is the clique number,
is the chromatic number
of
,
and
is the graph complement of
. This can be rewritten by changing the role of graph complements,
giving
(2)
|
which can be written using with
the independence number and
the clique
covering number as
(3)
|
Furthermore,
can be computed efficiently despite the fact that the computation of the two numbers
it lies between is an NP-hard problem.