Basic Properties of Convex Polytopes

Convex polytopes are fundamental geometric objects that have been investigated since antiquity. The beauty of their theory is nowadays complemented by their importance for many other mathematical subjects, ranging from integration theory, algebraic topology, and algebraic geometry (toric varieties) to linear and combinatorial optimization. In this chapter we try to give a short introduction, provide a sketch of “what polytopes look like” and “how they behave,” with many explicit examples, and briefly state some main results (where further details are in the subsequent chapters of this Handbook). We concentrate on two main topics: