Mikhail Lavrov, the author of the graph theory textbook 'Start Doing Graph Theory,' has established a formal version history to track and communicate ongoing edits to the material. The initiative began after the author identified a typo in the text that carried significant mathematical implications. To ensure clarity for students and educators, Lavrov maintains a policy where the web version and the primary PDF are updated immediately upon the discovery of errors, while archived versions are released on a semi-annual basis on January 1st and August 1st.
The most recent updates, finalized in October 2026, include a wide range of technical corrections. These include fixing a false statement in Chapter 24, correcting an off-by-one error in Theorem 28.7, and refining the statement of Kuratowski’s theorem in Chapter 22, which previously lacked a necessary 'not' qualifier. The author also adjusted problem sets to improve mathematical interest or reduce computational tedium, such as in Chapter 13, and added a practice problem from the Putnam competition.
Beyond simple corrections, the updates involve structural changes to the pedagogical content. For instance, in Chapter 28, a problem that was false as stated was replaced with a more accessible version, accompanied by a new problem that captures the original's core concepts. The author also corrected a historical attribution in Chapter 24, noting that a short proof of the five-color theorem was actually first published in Birkhoff’s 1913 paper. The textbook is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, allowing for open distribution while requiring attribution and sharing of modifications.