MathLabs
Step 3 of 6: Strip away boundary triangles one at a time
In plain words

Picture peeling bricks off the outer wall of a triangular brick pile, one brick at a time, always taking from the exposed boundary so the remaining pile never falls apart. Some bricks touch the outside along a full edge and some only at a corner, but either way, removing one always trims the same fixed amount off VV, EE and FF together, leaving V−E+FV-E+F untouched.

(i) one outer edge: ΔV=0, ΔE=−1, ΔF=−1;(ii) one outer vertex: ΔV=−1, ΔE=−2, ΔF=−1\text{(i) one outer edge: } \Delta V = 0,\ \Delta E = -1,\ \Delta F = -1; \qquad \text{(ii) one outer vertex: } \Delta V = -1,\ \Delta E = -2,\ \Delta F = -1
Detailed analysis

Working inward from the outer face, remove triangles one at a time. A triangle that touches the outer face along a single edge is deleted by erasing that shared edge, merging it into the outer face: this removes one edge and one face and leaves VV unchanged. A triangle that touches the outer face at a single vertex, with its other two edges on the boundary, is deleted by erasing those two edges together with the vertex opposite the outer face: this removes one vertex, two edges, and one face. In both cases V−E+FV - E + F does not change, and the process always leaves behind a smaller, still-connected triangulated graph.

Knowledge used in this step