Finding sets of points without empty convex 6-gons

Abstract

Erdös asked whether every large enough set of points in general position in the plane contains six points that form a convex 6-gon without any points from the set in its interior. In this note we show how a set of 29 points was found that contains no empty convex 6-gon. To this end a fast incremental algorithm for finding such 6-gons was designed and implemented and a heuristic search approach was used to find promising sets. Also some observations are made that might be useful in proving that large sets always contain an empty convex 6-gon.