In mathematics, a colored matroid is a matroid whose elements are labeled from a set of colors, which can be any set that suits the purpose, for instance the set of the first n positive integers, or the sign set {+, −}.
The interest in colored matroids is through their invariants, especially the colored Tutte polynomial, which generalizes the Tutte polynomial of a signed graph of Kauffman (1989).
There has also been study of optimization problems on matroids where the objective function of the optimization depends on the set of colors chosen as part of a matroid basis.
Famous quotes containing the word colored:
“There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about colored women, and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I’m for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again.”
—Sojourner Truth (1797–1883)