Solution to a problem of Erdős

How many ways can you select six points in the plane so that every subset of three points forms the vertices of an isosceles triangle? This is a question asked by Erdős and recently resolved.

One solution is to choose the five vertices of a regular pentagon and the center.

Erdos pentagon

It’s easy to verify that this is a solution. The much harder part is to show that this is the only solution.

A uniqueness proof was published on arXiv last Friday: A note on Erdős’s mysterious remark by Zoltán Kovács.

More Erdős-related posts

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